Strategy for Initial and Appending Reviews: An Emerging China Phenomenon

In most websites, consumers are allowed to leave reviews on the sellers, but in China, they are allowed to leave both initial and appending reviews. Appending reviews give the reviewers more chance to write or make revisions based on the first review. They also prevent consumers from making purchase decision out of incomplete information. Because it is a new business practice in China, there is no research on it so far. Our research purpose was to analyse the impact on consumer decisions from appending reviews. We also wanted to identify the best reply patterns for appending reviews. We found that when cognition relationship is dissonant, purchase decisions encounter difficulty. When valences are different, the orders made no difference for consumers. Sellers’ reply strategies may have different impact on consumers’ purchase decision difficulty