Review credibility as a safeguard against fakery: the case of Amazon

Online reviews remain a reliable source for customers when making purchase decisions. Yet, the pervasiveness of fake reviews jeopardises this reliability and questions the quality of this content. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence from a major online retailer that mitigation against fakery can be successful. To that end, we proposed, tested, and validated an approach, based on existing safeguards, to quantify the credibility of reviews and thus reliably reduce product uncertainty. We also showed that reviews with sufficient credibility signals were effective at influencing product sales, and this influence was prevalent for both niche and new products on the market. As such, this study offers a novel approach to mitigate the impact of fakery in reviews posted to online infomediaries. Our work focuses primarily on Amazon as a major retailer but also provides further support by drawing on Yelp, another major review platform.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the European Journal of Information Systems on March 18, 2021, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0960085X.2021.1886613.

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Work Title Review credibility as a safeguard against fakery: the case of Amazon
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Wael Jabr
Keyword
  1. Online markets
  2. Fakery
  3. Infomediary
  4. Credibility
License CC BY-NC 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. European Journal of Information Systems
Publication Date March 18, 2021
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2021.1886613
Deposited July 23, 2021

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Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Added Paper_Credibility_as_a_Safeguard_against_Fakery_The_Case_of_Amazon.pdf
  • Added Creator Wael Jabr
  • Published
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Version 2
published

  • Created
  • Updated Publisher's Statement Show Changes
    Publisher's Statement
    • This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the European Journal of Information Systems on March 18, 2021, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0960085X.2021.1886613.
  • Updated License Show Changes
    License
    • https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/
    • https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
  • Published
  • Updated
  • Updated
  • Updated Keyword, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • Online markets, Fakery, Infomediary, Credibility
    Publication Date
    • 2021-01-01
    • 2021-03-18