Digital Retailing: Understanding and Communicating with the e-Retailer

Consumer e-Reviews and eWOM, and It's Impact on e-Retailer Success

In the e-retailing world, most companies see success through customer reviews, regardless of if this is through shared social media posts, or a direct review on company's websites, consumer reviews are extremely important in which they help to build a consistent customer based established on experience and trust. In the day and age of online advertisements, and paying others to post positive reviews for e-retail companies, online reviews and electronic word-to-mouth has placed an extremely large impact on how e-retail processes measure success and business volume.

When focusing solely on e-reviews, this tactic is best used and performed for companies when consumers are already aware of a company, and they find a plethora of reviews useful when deciding on a purchase or find themselves wanting more information on a product. Aspects such as sizing, quality, and effectiveness can be found when reading through reviews on the e-retailers direct website, and are extremely useful when consumers have common questions that are not worth directly reaching out to the company to have answered. Consumers deciding on an online purchase may not have direct access to see a product in-person, or do not have the resources to go directly to a store in order to familiarize themselves with a product before purchasing. By venturing through e-reviews, these can give them a peace of mind prior to making a final purchase, especially if a consumer is on the fence about a purchase, and needs additional insight to make the right decision.

ReadyCloud provides numerous insightful statistics about the impact of reviews, for both online and traditional, in-person shopping/service experiences. Firstly, the ReadyCloud Content Team mentions that 92% of consumers will bring themselves to read reviews prior to purchasing a product, and a poor review is one very large reason as to why shoppers abandon their carts in an e-retail setting (2018). These facts prove just how important reviews are, and how they have the ability to influence consumer purchases. Focusing more on the e-retail setting relating to e-reviews, it is clear how impactful e-reviews can be to a company's success in an e-retail setting. To expand on this, it is stated that consumers are 124% more likely to purchase a product after reading a positive review when on a smartphone. Not only does this prove the impact that e-reviews yield positive results, but it shows how easily swayed consumers are when using easy-access technology to an e-retailer website. In addition to this, 63% of customers are more likely to purchase from an e-retailing website when the website has positive reviews (2018).

In society's current age of entrepreneurship, numerous companies may not open traditional brick-and-mortar stores when deciding to start a company, and open their business fully online, resulting in lower traffic rates initially when trying to build their customer base. Businesses may have a difficult time doing this, considering consumer trust builds with positive reviews. If consumers cannot physically walk into a shopping center and scope out a new store, it happens more often times than not that consumers do not gather the needed information, which can be a high reason why many pure-play companies do not see success in company growth. Starter e-retailer companies should highly prioritize promotion strategies to build a consistent customer base. From there, the impact of positive reviews helps to traffic more users and spread word to increase customer business and satisfaction.

Venturing onto the topic of eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth), the popularity of this form of product reviewing has exponentially grown in recent years due to the social uprising of influencer careers. It is extremely common in this day to be scrolling through social media apps, and coming across an unpaid, unsponsored product review that a trusted individual chooses to post about on their own time. Not only is this common and growing in popularity, influencers with large followings have proved the ability to sell out products because of their trusted word, and boost popularity of companies that are pure-play, and have recently entered the world of e-retail. By eWOM reviews, morale of the company and its trust with consumers can soar overnight, just from a simple post.

Once companies have seen how word spreads on social media, it has become extremely common for brands to enter paid-partnerships with popular influencers, sending them their products at no cost in exchange for an honest review, and many influencers make their income off of partnership with brands. The impact of social media marketing in modern day continues to grow through the increase in popularity of influencers. As previously stated, companies can have issues starting an e-retail shop, and can see lower traffic levels due to lack of reviews when initially launching their websites. By partnering with the aforementioned influencers, and initiating an agreement to send product and/or pay for honest eWOM reviews, starter e-retailers can quickly grow their brand from the beginning once these social media leaders' followers decide to give their business to the e-retailing platform, and post positively of said brands. This process can exponentially grow a business platform, and the more e-reviews and eWOM, the more they will see of the both of these.

For example, social media has the power to set trends for a range of ages, and the presence of young children on social media has proved to skyrocket sales for many. For example, the rise in popularity of "Sephora kids" because of influencer posts has quickly taken off, and caused beauty and skincare brands around the country to sell out of their products, mainly from young customers making purchases. When consumers see products on social media that are trending and being talked about, not only does the eWOM increase, sales increase with this. Stephanie Raymond of Audacy News discusses how large numbers of tweens are shopping at beauty retail stores, with influencer trends to blame (2024).

Forbes states that word-of-mouth marketing is "the most valuable form of marketing"(2014). Although this article and topic was published and discussed ten years ago, the ability of this marketing tactic to grow has been easier and easier as more social media platforms are introduced, and more social media influencers rise in popularity. By investing in those with a high social media presence, their ability to discuss a product and leave an eWOM review on their accounts initiates a trickle effect, where other social media users will purchase this product and post about it for social media credibility, which goes on for months until, in many cases, a product sells out because of its high popularity. When people see someone with such high status use or purchase a specific product, they can't help but to get their hands on it.

When a consumer is considering purchasing a new product, not only can they go into any search engine and research this product with reviews on numerous websites, they can also go onto social media applications and research a product. More times than not, any social media platform's search option will yield numerous posts about a product, and people's honest opinions. Easy access to smartphones and tablets have assisted in this process, in which most people can quickly go on their phone and find honest information about a product without doing extensive research.

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Eleonora Pantano, Bang Nguyen, Charles Dennis, & Sabine Gerlach. (2017). Internet Retailing and Future Perspectives: Vol. Second edition. Routledge.

Raymond, S. (2024, January 17). More and more 10-year-olds are filling carts with beauty products. Sephora kids: More 10-year-olds are buying beauty products. https://www.audacy.com/wwjnewsradio/news/national/sephora-kids-more-10-year-olds-are-buying-beauty-products

Team, R. C. (2022, May 19). 21 statistics about Product Reviews & Why Your Store Needs Them. ReadyCloud. https://www.readycloud.com/info/21-statistics-about-product-reviews-4-convincing-reasons-why-your-store-needs-them

Whitler, K. A. (2023, September 12). Why word of mouth marketing is the most important social media. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberlywhitler/2014/07/17/why-word-of-mouth-marketing-is-the-most-important-social-media/?sh=5edf083854a8