action that confirms that they had bought the product in question. Along with that, this online platform facilitates both good and bad reviews to be shared directly under the product. This ensured a customer the ease of online shopping without having to go through much trouble of finding relevant reviews. Initially, marketing experts were sceptical of Amazon’s strategy, but Amazon was steadfast on their decision stating they wanted to share the truth with their customers (Sprague, 2019).
Customer reviews are often known to have a direct connection with the rise in sales. Building online trust is a hurdle faced by the vast majority of online sellers, especially for those who are newly established or do not enjoy a brand reputation (Pengnate & Sarathy, 2017). Thus, sellers are tempted to incentivise potential customers or pay for positive reviews on their product, and this gives rise to the problem of fake reviews. Being the most comprehensive e-commerce site, Amazon too has to face the issue of fake reviews. Even after restricting the reviews to ‘verified purchasers’, the sellers on the platform kept purchasing fraudulent reviews.
Most of these sellers reach out to reviewers through groups on social networks and messaging apps and ask to give feedback in exchange for money or other compensation. The reviewers either receive a reimbursement for the cost of buying the products, an Amazon gift card or they resell the items on other websites such as eBay. This practice boosts the ranking of the products and goes on to mislead customers.
Although Amazon has been consistent in keeping a check on the reviews on its site, the current pandemic has created an added load. With customers resorting to e-commerce platforms like Amazon in this situation, sellers are falling back on to like fake reviews in order to alleviate their sales. Recently, Amazon deleted thousands of fake reviews after an investigation that showed that fake reviewers were regularly commenting on Chinese products to increase their customer rating as well as the merchants (Lee, 2020) (Kakrania, 2020).
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Electronic word of mouth (eWOM)
Due to the lack of tangible experience, online users quite often use customer review to infer the likely quality of the brand and develop an accordant leaning toward it (Utz, Kerkhof & van den Bos, 2012). Litvin et al. (2008) describes electronic word of mouth as all informal communication that takes place over the Internet between consumers, related to the use or features of goods or services or the sellers. The benefit that comes with this medium is that it is accessible by all consumers who make use of the online platforms to share their opinions and reviews with others (Huete-Alcocer, 2017). In eWOM, consumers report their experience with a product or service or a seller. The length of the review depends on the consumer. Most of the time, consumers leave an overall rating of the product (e.g. 1–5 stars). However, some people share their complete experience in descriptive text. A positive review usually stresses not only on the quality of the product but also its design, the seller’s accountability, the ease of understandability of the instruction manual,
