Abstract:

As online product reviews have become an important source of information for consumers to make purchase decisions, firms are tempted to monitor and manipulate online product reviews to influence consumer perceptions about their products, making online review manipulations a research topic in urgent need for theory development and empirical study. In this paper, we examine how consumers perceive different manipulation strategies in terms of perceived ethicality and deceptiveness, their effect on consumers’ purchase intention, and the moderating role of persuasion knowledge. This research contributes to the online marketing literature by extending Information Manipulation Theory and the Persuasion Knowledge model to the online context and provides valuable insight to industry associations and policy makers to ensure the healthy development of e-commerce.

Key words: 网络评论操纵, 说服知识模型, 信息操纵理论, 电子商务