An Exploratory Study on Buyers' Participation in Reputation Systems

Online reputation systems have been found to be an effective way to ensure honest behavior from the seller in consumer to consumer (C2C) e-commerce. At the same time, reputation systems have also been regarded as an important platform where large-scale of word-of mouth behavior and evaluations of the purchase experience could be communicated. There are altogether two components in online reputation systems: ratings and textual feedback. Thus, reputation systems are often considered to be constituted of buyers’ quantitative scoring and qualitative feedback which offers an important reference to other buyers when deciding whether or not to buy from a seller. The aim of this study is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the antecedents and motivation of buyers’ participation in the C2C reputation system after each transaction. Due to a lack of related research, interviews with online buyers have been first conducted to help to decide the research scope and identify the main antecedents. Satisfaction and conflict handling styles have a significant impact on willingness to submit a positive rating. The study also confirms that willingness to submit textual feedback could be investigated through WOM behaviour and online contribution.