English abstract
Online shopping has become popular due to the growing market of e-commerce,
accessibility to the internet technology, and the availability of a wide range of mobile
shopping applications. Like traditional shopping, online consumers’ understanding, and
interpretation of product information may be influenced by certain factors. Such factors
may affect the buying decisions and in return impact the online sales performance of ecommerce platforms. A fair number of studies were conducted to examine the overall
factors that may have an impact on the sales performance of e-commerce businesses. One
of the leading factors found is “online consumer reviews”. Existing studies were mainly
conducted on e-commerce websites that are mainly based in the United States, China, and
India. Thus, there is a lack of studies examining the influence of consumer reviews on ecommerce sales within the Arabian Gulf Region despite it being a highly attractive ecommerce market with an increase in profits from $5 billion in 2015 to $20 billion in
2020.
This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing the influence of online consumer reviews on
the online sales performance of Amazon.ae by developing a research model and testing
its hypothesis. Additionally, this study examines the moderating effect of product
category on the influence of online consumer reviews on online sales performance.
Amazon.ae was selected considering it is one of the leading e-commerce platforms in the
Gulf Region. A total of 5,066 product records were collected across 8 product categories.
The findings of this study revealed that online review ratings do not influence the online
sales performance of Amazon.ae. On the other hand, online review volume significantly
influences online sales performance. The findings also revealed that product category
affects the overall relationship between online consumer reviews and sales performance.
These findings contribute to the literature by examining how online consumer reviews
affect online sales performance in a Gulf-region-owned e-commerce website. In addition,
the findings can help decision-makers within the field of e-commerce to better understand
how online reviews are impacting their sales, and which component of the online review
has the greatest influence on their sales.
