Published Paper Details:

Aided by the technological advancements and with the advent of the digital media, consumers are now opting for online retail or online shopping. This paradigm shift calls for the marketers to understand and analyze the consumer buying behaviour in a new light. The list of factors that affect the consumer decision process have additions like online customer reviews and E-WOM (electronic word-of-mouth) to name a few. Consumers can easily obtain information about the product or service through online customer reviews and this in turn can have an impact on the consumer decision process. Researchers across the globe acknowledged the impact of customer reviews on the consumer decision process. Consumer decision process is a cognitive process and customer review is bound to perceived differently by different individuals. The primary research objective of this study was to understand the degree of impact of the customer reviews on the consumer decision process of consumers of different age groups. Further, an attempt has been made to analyze whether the degree of impact of the customer reviews varies with the change in the nature of the market offering or not. The study recommends that age and income of the respondents are some of the key elements when determining the degree of impact of customer reviews. It also highlights the fact that consumers irrespective of their age are by and large affected by some form of the customer review or the other. The analysis also indicates that marketers are implementing various forms of customer reviews and customers are influenced by the same but maybe with varying degree depending on the nature of the product/service to be purchased.