Dependence of consumers
When you are buying travel books online, how do you decide which one to buy? Because you are not actually looking into the books online, many people may find it difficult to find what is the best choice. Therefore, you might wonder what factors could possible influence these people on buying travel books. Recent studies have discovered that customer reviews and expert recommendations have a great influence when people purchase books online.
The research shows that the star number of average customer review regarding a specific book influenced the online book choices of subjects. Additionally, recommendations from different sources also have different influences on increasing willingness to purchase books online. This corresponds to our readings on information networks and world-wide web. More recommendations directed to the books in forms of customer recommendations and references indicate higher importance and quality associated to that book. Since we are buying books online, references act as hyperlinks to the book. In addition, the study finds that consumer online recommendations influence consumer choices more than those of an expert. We can interpret this result as these recommendations having different degree of influences. It seems that people who purchase the book usually make the recommendations. Because there usually are more of them than experts recommends, consumers influences potential consumers more than the experts.
Another issue that arises in online book sales is herd behavior. Current consumers influence potential consumers, which leads to potential consumers likely to prefer books that other consumers already purchased. On the other hand, the books that consumers do not purchase lead to no recommendation which will ultimately be overlooked despite the fact that they might have better expert recommendations. Therefore, there needs to be an alternate method that allows consumers to make better choices on their own instead of relying on other consumers.
Reference: http://ibacnet.org/bai2007/proceedings/Papers/2007bai7493.doc