Bias in network-based information transmission by consumers

An empirical analysis of online reviews in Japan and the United States

Abstract

This study examines the following two hypotheses: 1) a large part of eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) is posted by a limited portion of people, 2) there is a greater tendency for people who have just started using a service to write an online review, and short-term impressions are mostly included in online reviews. As a result of the empirical analysis, approximately 80% of eWOM were written by approximately 4% of internet users. In addition, users had a greater tendency to write online reviews immediately after a download in comparison to other active users, and the rate of this was approximately 5.59 times in Japan and approximately 8.76 times in the United States. Furthermore, from an estimate of a breakdown of online reviews on the basis of this result, it was understood that the percentage of online reviews written immediately following a download was approximately 28% in Japan and approximately 59% in the United States, so that short-term impressions were mostly included in the online reviews. Moreover, we found that this tendency was strong in one-star reviews and low performance apps. Considering the above, both hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 were supported.