在线评论对知识付费产品购买决策的影响研究--卖家回复的调节作用

The Effect of Online Reviews on the Purchase Decision of Paid Knowledge Products:The Moderating Effect of Seller Responses

知识付费行业信息不对称程度较高,在线评论和卖家回复成为影响用户购买决策的关键。本文基于信号理论,探讨了在线评论和卖家回复分别作为市场信号和卖家信号对知识付费产品购买决策的直接影响,并讨论了卖家信号对市场信号与知识付费产品购买决策间关系的调节作用。本文采用在行平台的11万余条评论和2万余条卖家回复数据验证模型。结果表明,评论数量、卖家认知度、用户体验度和卖家回复率正向影响知识付费产品购买决策,评论效价与知识付费产品购买决策呈倒U型关系,评论长度对知识付费产品购买决策影响不显著,同时,卖家回复率显著增强评论数量和用户体验度与知识付费产品购买决策之间的关系。

Under the impact of the information explosion and iterative upgrade of the payment structure,free knowledge sharing enters the knowledge payment 3.0 stage.Users’purchase decisions not only directly affect sellers’financial income,but also largely influence their willingness to continue producing paid knowledge products,ultimately determining the survival,prosperity,and sustainability of knowledge payment platforms.From the perspective of information attributes,the quality of paid knowledge products is difficult to assess because of the high information asymmetry between sellers and users.From the perspective of producers and sellers,knowledge products sellers are also producers who determine the quality of paid knowledge products.Therefore,exploring the influence mechanism of online reviews and seller responses helps reveal users’purchase decision process of paid knowledge products,which is crucial to the marketing management of paid knowledge products.Research on the effect of online reviews on the purchase decision of credence products is scarce.Only a few studies have explored the effects of review valence and review quantity on the purchase decision of paid knowledge products.First,existing studies are still in the early stage of analyzing the characteristics of paid knowledge products’online reviews,in which a situational mining analysis of review content is absent.Second,extant literature overlooked the information quantity signal of online reviews and didn’t consider the effect of online reviews as a market signal on the purchase decision of paid knowledge products.Given the high information asymmetry and difficulty in assessing the quality of paid knowledge products,it is necessary to explore the fine-grained features of online reviews and reveal their influence on the purchase decisions of paid knowledge products,which is crucial to effectively enhance the practical value of online reviews and improve seller performance.The existing literature mainly focuses on the effect of seller responses on seller performance and online ratings,limiting to service sectors such as the travel industry and the restaurant industry.The role of seller responses in the knowledge payment industry requires further investigation.First,unlike experience goods such as hotels and restaurants,paid knowledge products are credence goods,which means that users have higher perceived risk awareness.The findings of existing research cannot explain the impact of seller responses on the purchase decision of paid knowledge products.Therefore,it is worth exploring the role of seller responses in the knowledge payment industry.Second,regarding the direct effect of seller responses on seller performance,existing research has not yet reached a consensus.Finally,although the existing literature has confirmed the moderating effect of seller responses on the relationship between online reviews and purchase decisions,it has not yet examined,from a signaling theory perspective,the moderating effect of seller responses as seller signals on the relationship between various market signals of online reviews and purchase decisions.Therefore,it is necessary to reveal the direct and moderating effects of seller responses in the knowledge payment industry.The findings will provide a theoretical basis and practical guidance for the adoption of seller response strategies.Based on signaling theory,this paper conducts a fine-grained text mining analysis of paid knowledge products reviews,using the number of reviews,review valence,review length,seller cognition,and user experience as market signals and sellers’response rate as a seller signal.Then,this paper discusses the direct effects of market signals and the seller signal on the purchase decision of paid knowledge products and studies the moderating effect of sellers’signals on the relationship between market signals and purchase decisions.In this paper,more than 110,000 online reviews and more than 20,000 seller responses on Zaihang,a well-known knowledge-sharing platform in China,are used to test the proposed model and hypotheses.Results show that the number of reviews,seller cognition,user experience,and sellers’response rate positively affect purchase decision,review valence has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the purchase decision,and review length has no significant effects on the purchase decision.Moreover,sellers’response rate significantly strengthens the effect of the number of reviews and user experience on the purchase decision.This paper extends the findings from prior literature in the following aspects.First,this paper considers the influence of sellers’response rate on the purchase decision of paid knowledge products.This paper fills in the gap that limited research considers the impact of seller response and provided a theoretical basis for understanding the positive impact of seller response.Second,from the perspective of market signals and seller signals,this paper explores the influence of online reviews and seller responses on the purchase decision of paid knowledge products.Furthermore,this paper divides market signals into popularity signals,quality signals,and information signals,thus refining the signal theory and building a more comprehensive signal theoretical framework for purchase decision research.Third,this paper focuses on the moderating effect of sellers’response rate as a seller signal on the relationship between market signals and knowledge-based product purchase decisions,which enriches the literature on the interaction between different signals and provides theoretical support for sellers to recognize and manage seller responses.The conclusions of this paper demonstrate the influencing mechanism of online reviews and seller responses on the purchase decision of knowledge payment products,which has important management implications and business value for sellers and knowledge payment platforms.The results further emphasize the practical significance of online reviews and seller responses in the knowledge payment field,helping to optimize marketing strategy portfolio and improve the ROI of marketing strategies.First,sellers and knowledge payment platforms can take specific measures based on the findings of this paper to attract users to purchase knowledge payment products.To this end,sellers and knowledge payment platforms can maximize the purchase decision behavior of potential users through the synergy between online reviews and seller responses.Second,by understanding the types of information that influence users’purchase decisions,knowledge payment platforms can develop and design better decision support systems for potential users.Third,by predicting the sales of knowledge payment products through online reviews and seller responses,knowledge payment platforms can adjust their promotion focus and allocate resources to improve the overall activity of knowledge payment platforms and ensure the prosperity and sustainability of the platforms.