Effects of negative reviews and managerial responses on consumer attitude and subsequent purchase behavior: An experimental design

Online negative reviews and managerial responses have decisive impacts on the attitudes and behavior of the prospective customers, who read the information from reviews and responses and gain insights about products and seller services for making an online purchasing decision. This study, based on the category diagnosticity theory and the literature on managerial responses, develops a research framework to explain the relationships between online negative reviews, managerial responses, consumer attitudes, and their consequent purchase intention behavior. Using an experimental design and data from 246 respondents, it was found that negative reviews (i.e., review diagnosticity, review impression) have negative impacts on two types of consumer attitudes (i.e., attitude toward product, attitude toward seller) and purchase behavior. Managerial responses (i.e., response rate, response relevance) were found not only to have positive effects on potential consumers’ attitudes and behavior, but also were found to moderate the negative impacts of negative reviews. These findings provide managerial implications for the sellers in the shopping environment, where their interactions with past customers might consequently influence their sales in the future.