Exploring Reviewers’ Contributions to Online Review Platforms

Online customer reviews are one of the important information sources during the purchase decision process. The importance of online reviews can be gauged from a surge in online review-hosting websites and ever-increasing size of user communities associated with these platforms. These platforms thrive on volunteer contributions from users from writing reviews to managing lists and various other community activities. The amount and quality of user contributions on these platforms play a critical role on long-term success of these platforms. Prior research has focused on role and effect of user reviews on purchase decision process for prospective customers. However, we do not yet understand why users continue to contribute. We also do not know if they change their contributions over time. Reviewers are heterogeneous in their experience, expertise and motivations. In this research, we investigate how reviewers’ contributions to online review hosting websites changes over time. We find that reviewers do write fewer reviews over time and their experience, expertise, participation cost and motivation affects their contribution to these platforms.