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Opinion evolution of online consumer reviews in the e-commerce environment

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Abstract

Online consumer reviews play an important role in shaping potential customers’ purchase decisions in e-commerce. Previous studies have analyzed the influence of online consumer reviews on sales, mainly considering factors such as reviewers’ and viewers’ profiles, information provided, and product features. However, there are relatively few studies that discuss how online consumer reviews interact with each other and how consumers’ opinions evolve over time. This paper proposes an opinion evolution dynamics model that is applicable to online consumer reviews in the e-commerce environment by taking into account influencing factors such as viewer reading limits, review sorting and releasing strategies, convergence parameters, review posting possibilities, and confidence thresholds. Using multi-agent simulation based on the proposed opinion evolution dynamics model, the paper discusses how these factors affect viewers’ opinions, and the opinion evolution process itself. Finally, conclusions and managerial implications of the simulation results are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Science Project of the Ministry of Education of China (13YJA630084), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71471019, 71402007, 71201011, 71473143), the Doctoral Scientific Fund Project of the Ministry of Education of China (No. 20120005120001), and the Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning (No. TP2015031).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, People’s Republic of China

    Yan Wan & Baojun Ma

  2. School of Business and Management, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, 200083, People’s Republic of China

    Yu Pan

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  1. Yan Wan
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Correspondence to Baojun Ma.

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Wan, Y., Ma, B. & Pan, Y. Opinion evolution of online consumer reviews in the e-commerce environment. Electron Commer Res 18, 291–311 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-017-9258-7

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