Abstract

Over the last decade, the retail industry has had a phenomenal growth. All figures show their success and efficiency and many studies have shown the role of customer reviews in encouraging ambivalent purchasers to buy items online. There have been numerous studies on why people read and trust these comments and taking for granted the important role of customer reviews in determining buying decision, this study endeavors to identify and explain the different factors involved in making a comment “useful.” We took an Iranian retail website and collected comments on perceived “usefulness” of each review. Our results showed that perceived level of usefulness was related to the word count of the comments, personal experience of the writer with the product, emotional description of the product, and mentioning the strength/weakness points of the product.