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Exit, Voice and Loyalty in Consumers’ Online-Posting Behavior: An Empirical Analysis of Reviews and Ratings Found on Amazon.com

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Book cover Decision Economics. Designs, Models, and Techniques for Boundedly Rational Decisions (DCAI 2018)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 805))

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Abstract

In this paper, we aim to describe the behavior of e-commerce consumers by analyzing the distribution of online reviews and ratings. Different from studies conducted previously, which have focused on the positivity and negativity of ratings, our work analyzes the ratings distribution through a tensor-based approach. This approach allows us to observe a new range of information related to distributions’ features that we describe through the “Exit, Voice and Loyalty” scheme. In addition, we seek a distribution function capable of capturing these features, and we aim to over-perform the synthesis provided by using a polynomial regression model. For this reason, we introduce an ad hoc beta-type modified function to create a proxy of collected data. We found a tri-modal distribution (S-modal) as a relevant component of the J-shaped distributions referred in the literature.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Centre for Evaluation and Socio-Economic Development, University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Pescara, Italy

    Tony E. Persico & Assia Liberatore

  2. B-Eat Digital Agency, Rome, Italy

    Giovanna Sedda

Authors
  1. Tony E. Persico
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  2. Giovanna Sedda
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  3. Assia Liberatore
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tony E. Persico .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophical, Pedagogical and Economic-Quantitative Sciences, Section of Economics and Quantitative Methods, University of Chieti-Pescara, Pescara, Italy

    Edgardo Bucciarelli

  2. AI-ECON Research Center - Department of Economics, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Shu-Heng Chen

  3. Departamento de Informática y Automática, Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Juan Manuel Corchado

Appendix

Appendix

The analysis presented in this paper is based on products sampling method. The minimum number of ratings per product is 100 for each category, while a maximum number is not configured. Therefore, the amounts of ratings vary depending on each product. We compare their distributions based on vectors of ratings with different magnitude, synthesized using percentage composition of ratings. Nonetheless, we show absolute values as well as additional information on data collected in Table 3. We noted that categories with the greater percentage of unimodal distribution of ratings, such as Clothes and Grocery, have also the lowest number of ratings collected. This finding might highlight the bounded familiarity of online users with these types of categories, suggesting a relationship between familiarity and ratings distribution. This kind of relationship will be further analyzed in future studies by using extra-lab experiments and advanced computational techniques.

Table 3. Distribution of ratings and details for categories
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Persico, T.E., Sedda, G., Liberatore, A. (2019). Exit, Voice and Loyalty in Consumers’ Online-Posting Behavior: An Empirical Analysis of Reviews and Ratings Found on Amazon.com. In: Bucciarelli, E., Chen, SH., Corchado, J. (eds) Decision Economics. Designs, Models, and Techniques for Boundedly Rational Decisions. DCAI 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 805. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99698-1_16

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