Online Review

With the emergence of Web 2.0, user generated content in the form of online product reviews has proliferated. Although product reviews contain valuable information, they vary greatly in terms of quality and credibility. This study presents an opinion mining framework - Cred-OPMiner (Credibility-Specific-Opinion Miner) - by combining the concepts of credibility and aspect based opinion mining. Cred-OPMiner performs three main tasks. The first task is to group reviewers based on the credibility dimensions. The second critical task is aspect extraction in which aspects of a given product are identified using a novel hybrid and domain independent algorithm. The final task is the sentiment prediction task where the sentiment on each aspect is computed. The key novelty is utilizing source credibility concepts for online reviewer clustering. Source credibility dimensions including trustworthiness and expertise are quantified using reviewers’ data. In addition, a new aspect extraction technique is developed and incorporated in the Cred-OPMiner. Cred-OPMiner was tested using data crawled from epinions.com. It groups reviewers and then performs aspect based opinion mining by differentiating among opinions of various reviewer groups.

Online reviews play a crucial role in the consumer decision-making process in the glamping industry. Some reviews are misleading; therefore, users need to identify credible reviews to form objective opinions. This study examined dimensions of perceived review credibility and its influence on purchase intention within the glamping business. Online surveys were conducted with respondents with relevant travel experiences to examine the key credibility factors. Findings identified that review length, amount of detail, writing style, and travelers’ images; as well as mixed, moderate, and two-sided reviews influence perceived review credibility. It was also found that perceived review credibility influences purchase intention; that management response impacts perceived company credibility and purchase intention; and that personalized management response is valuable for the perceived credibility and purchase intention. A revised conceptual framework was developed to demonstrate the sources of perceived credible online reviews and the role of management responses in the reviews. In addition to the theoretical contribution, this study can have practical marketing implications for businesses when creating online promotional material for their products and engaging with customers