Effect of ‘Webcare’ on Students’ Online Review Intention: Implications for Customers’ Purchase Intention

Abstract

As consumers increasingly put their faith in online consumer reviews, taking advantage of their right of reply through the production of appropriate response or webcare has become a growing challenge for e-commerce businesses. This study examines the effect of webcare on students’ review intentions and its implications for patronage intention. The study specifically examines the main and interaction effects of webcare strategies (i.e, appreciative, accommodative or no webcare) and review consensus (i.e., high or low) on students review intention based on the theoretical foundation of social learning theory and elaboration likelihood model. The study adopts a 3(appreciative vs. accommodative vs. No webcare) × (2 high vs. low) factorial experimental design and a sample of 82 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of the 6 experimental conditions. Four hypotheses were tested using a two-way or factorial ANOVA on SPSS version 15. The results show significant main effect of webcare but not consensus on review intentions. Appreciative webcare was found to increase review intention more than the accommodative webcare when consensus in positively balanced message is low whereas the accommodative webcare influence review intentions more than other webcare strategies when consensus in a negatively balanced review is high. Therefore, it is worthwhile for internet retailers to monitor reviews on their social media and other online platforms for both positive and negative reviews and cautiously appreciate positive feedback while apologizing for service failure and attempting to remedy the situation publicly to motivate reviews that are more favorable.