THE EFFECTS OF RATINGS AND REVIEWS ON CUSTOMER’S PURCHASE INTENTION ON SOCIAL COMMERCE WEBSITES

Abstract

Purpose: To improve the online shopping experience, one of social commerce components is used by social commerce websites i.e. ratings and reviews. The motivation behind this investigation is to investigate the effects of ratings and reviews on purchase intention of customers on social commerce websites. However, ifwe look more precisely, this research is for the exploration of the effects of ratings and reviews on purchase intention of customers on social commerce websites within the universities of Pakistan. Methodology & Design: This study built up an exploration model relating social commerce components and purchase intention through one authoritative variable ofsocial components (ratings and reviews) and two variables of phycology (cognitive appraisal and affective appraisal). The method used for this research is quantitative while the sample size for this study is 350 respondents all of them belong to universities. The data for the research is collected from primary sources that is, questionnaire. The statistical test used for this research includes Cronbach’s Alpha, Correlation and Regression Analysis. commerce Findings: The findings from the tests identifies that all the three variables have strong influence on purchase intention. The statistical result shows that, the Sig. P value is less than 0.05, which provides significant evidence to reject the entire null hypothesis. This study found a significantly positive relation between learning from ratings and reviews, cognitive appraisal, affective appraisals and purchase intention. Limitations: the research is limited to the Education sector of Karachi. Although the E buying of customer is also going on in Punjab and other region of Pakistan, due to time and budget constraints the research is only been carried out into Sindh region. This research has explored only one social commerce components such as ratings and reviews. In spite of this, other social commerce components may have been found that can be associated to purchase intention of E- buying behavior of customers.