The content of online reviews and consumer purchase behavior: Comparison between C2C and B2C in China

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the content of online reviews and consumer purchase behavior in China's Consumer to Consumer (C2C) online market and China's Business to Consumer (B2C) online market, and compare if there is a significant difference between the relationship. The content of online reviews and monthly sales volume of experience goods on Taobao and Tmall are collected and analyzed by SPSS 23.0 software and Stata/SE 15.1 software. The statistical results show that shop reputation, including description star rating, service star rating, and logistic star rating, has a much higher significant relationship with monthly sales on the B2C online market than the C2C online market. This result suggests the incompleteness of trust and reputation systems in the C2C online market.