Choice Architecture: The role of users’ reviews as tools for mitigating consumers’ perceived risks when purchasing electronics online

Tacca, Raffaele (2018) Choice Architecture: The role of users’ reviews as tools for mitigating consumers’ perceived risks when purchasing electronics online. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

Electronic commerce has been continuously growing in the last decades and organisations have adapted designing new strategies and launching platforms on the web for online sales. Consumers with the intention to purchase a product online have to go through a decision-making process that involves both the product to buy and the seller to buy from. In this area of interest choice architecture is a discipline that study human behaviour in the act of making a choice and provide insights and techniques that choice architects can use and put in place to assist the consumers in their decision making process. Perceived risks both product and seller related are those barriers that might discourage consumers from successfully completing their evaluation process. Websites features and cues are the visible outputs of choice architects strategic decisions and have the purpose to attract and persuade consumers to proceeding with a purchase. Users’ reviews are one of the most known and effective tools used for the purpose and therefore they are selected as the area of interest of this dissertation.

The purpose of the study is to discuss the role of users’ reviews as a tool for mitigating consumers’ perceived risks both during the product and the seller evaluation stage. Specifically the interest is on the role of each component in a user’s review: volume, valence or rating and textual sentiments.

Interviews with a sample of online consumers selected in Ireland showed that both for product and seller evaluation stage, volume and valence do not have a direct role of mitigating the perceived risks but an initial function of screening good products or sellers from bad ones; on the other side textual sentiments are considered adding value information that mitigate the residual perceived risk.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > Marketing > Consumer Behaviour H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > Electronic Commerce
Divisions:	School of Business > Master of Business Administration
Depositing User:	Caoimhe Ní Mhaicín
Date Deposited:	30 Oct 2018 12:37
Last Modified:	30 Oct 2018 12:37
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/3353

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