Key take away points
The current peer-reviewed article on “Impact of online consumer reviews on sales and price strategies: a review and directions for future research” by Peter De Maeyer provides a broad perspective on the linkages between online reviews provided by the customer on the impact on commodity prices and sales. The article explores the diverse literature on this particular topic in marketing and provides a literary analysis of the same. The article strives to explore the impact of customer reviews on the decision making, policy and strategy formulation by the organizations. This article has considered the linkages between online customer reviews with those of commodity pricing and sales. There is a need to explore several other factors that may be impacted due to online customer reviews including the need for strategy formulation and decision making in business.
Critical appraisal
Evaluation of the structure
The article first provides the effect of prices, sales and other dependent constructs on online customer reviews. It then goes on to explore the relevant constructs and dimensions of online customer reviews, the characteristics of the reader and the reviewer, the category of the product and the product itself. Somehow, all these constructs need to be handled more in detail and the article has just touched upon each one of them. The reader finds it confusing to understand and to relate the manner in which these are impacted by online customer reviews. The author has presented a lot of information and has poorly arranged the structure. The constructs explored and different and the reader is not able to relate all these with online consumer reviews.
Significance of the article to students and supervisors
The article does provide a lot of data with respect to online consumer reviews and its impacts. Supervisors may be able to understand the manner in which firms collect and collate data to further use it in formulating prices and garner sales of products. Managers as well as students will have significant insight in reading the article as it provides immense information on online customer reviews. Further studies may be undertaken to find out the manner in which organizations may formulate marketing and pricing strategies from the data garnered from online customer reviews. The role of information technology in helping to collate and analyze big data in this field may also be explored.
Recommendation to students and managers
References
Maeyer, P.D. (2012). Impact of online consumer reviews on sales and price strategies: a review and directions for future research. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 21 (2), 132 – 139.
