The Impact of Fake Reviews of Online Goods on Consumers

Abstract

The fake product reviews on the Internet have brought great obstacles to consumers to make the right purchase decision. Fake reviews reduce the goodwill of e-commerce platforms and harm the interests of most merchants on the platforms. The appearance of fake reviews is easy to mislead consumers to make wrong decisions. Therefore, the research and identification of fake comments are urgent and significant. This paper will detailed discussion and analyze the impact of fake reviews on consumers from the perspective of the formation of consumers' purchase decisions. The four dimensions are demand cognition, looking for alternative plans, purchase decisions, and purchase behavior. Fake reviews may stimulate consumers' purchase desire by changing their demand perception. When evaluating alternative plans, they are affected by the reputation of merchants, etc., and fake reviews significantly affect the purchase decision. Consumers may make positive or negative comments after a purchase. When reviewers do not have expectations for the goods they receive, they become distrustful of the business and the platform, and they give emotionally negative reviews. If satisfied, positive publicity feedback will be given. This paper conducts literature and case studies on the impact of poor information on consumers caused by artificial evaluations and the prevention and control of fake reviews. The author will analyze the reasons for the occurrence of false comments and discuss how to prevent the occurrence of false information to the maximum extent, including the establishment of reward and punishment mechanisms, innovating the detection technology of fake commodity reviews to avoid unfair competition, and strengthening the control of real-name information on the Internet.