The Mediating Effect of Brand Trust Between Online Customer Reviews and Willingness to Buy

Abstract

This research investigates how online customer reviews affect consumer decision-making (willingness to buy) during their first purchase of services or products. By using brand trust as a mediating variable in the relationship between online customers’ reviews and consumers’ willingness to buy, data was collected through a quasi-experiment approach, and analysed using structural equation modelling. 240 returns were used in this study (a response rate of approximately 70%). The findings demonstrated that the “reliability dimension” of brand trust has a mediating effect on online customer reviews’ valence to willingness to buy, while the “intentionality dimension” had little effect. Furthermore, the findings also suggested that online customer reviews generated by in-group and out-group reviewers have little effect on purchasing decisions when viewing the reviews from an independent source. These results suggest that marketers should focus more on managing negative online customer reviews that have a damaging effect on brand trust.