Impact of Customer Reviews and Blogs on Purchase Decision

Running Head: Consumer Behaviour
Blogs and consumer
reviews
Impact of Customer reviews and Blogs
on Purchase Decision

Consumer Behavior P a g e | 1
Essay Topic
Impact of consumer Blogs and Reviews on Customer
Purchase decision
The premise of the essay here is to determine the impact of Blogs and customer
reviews posted online in the purchase decision of the potential customers. There
are no two thoughts that blogs and consumer reviews in the present day have a
very strong hand to play in the buying behaviour of the consumers. The growing
popularity of digital channels or Web 2.0 tools has turned the entire world into a
big global village which is connected by one single link called as the “Internet”.
Internet clubbed with the new technologies of the present world is driving the
online ecosystem and influencing people’s perception and thoughts on what
good or commodity has to be purchased (Strauss & Frost, 2016). In simple
words, the Blogs and customer reviews have a direct impact on the buying
behaviour of the customer. In the essay, it will be studied how exactly blogs and
customers reviews impact the behaviour.
Buyer behaviour in the simplest of terms can be understood as the step by step
approach a customer undergoes while entering the purchase process and
eventually making the buying decision. This buyer journey can be easily broken
down into four steps to give a detailed insight on which step does the blogs and
customer reviews impact his buying behaviour. The first step in the buying
behaviour is the Need Recognition; this is the point when the buyer feels a
functional need or an emotional need to buy a particular product. This is the also
the first stage for the marketers to step in the customer’s mind and create a
need for the product, the company ensures this by world-wide campaigns both
on the traditional and web 2.0 tools to make people aware of the product or
service in the ecosystem(Cantallops & Salvi,2014). The second step, which is a
very crucial stage in the buyer journey is the Information Search, this is the
stage where markets have a very crucial role to play in influencing and
impacting the customer to buy their product. Customer here looks out for the
product they have kept their eyes on and also look for other alternatives in the
same category. This is the stage where marketers influence the customer by
providing him high targeted organic or inorganic content through digital

Consumer Behavior P a g e | 2
channels including blogs. The marketers here create a strong brand proposition
through the blogs written on the product by the industry experts or people who
have a strong follower base on the social media. Thus, Internet helps the
customer in conducting a detailed search on the product, his alternatives thus
giving marketers to influence consumers strongly during this steps by the use of
consumer blogs (Organic and inorganic) and customer reviews (Organic)(Erkans
& Evans, 2016). The third step is the Customer and Purchase experience
which is provided by the company to the customer in the sales process.
Marketers in this step want to build customer loyalty by providing him best
customer service and experience, thus it is very important part of the marketing
strategy. Customer arrives at the decision and makes the purchase in the
last step, this step is the resultant of all the information he collected from the
internet, blogs, customer reviews. Social media channels, peer and colleagues
and so on and finally decided to buy the product (Solomon, 2014).
(Source: Kim & Johnson, 2017)
The above image shows that the world with over an estimated population over 7
Billion has an Internet penetration of 50%, implying that over 3.773 billion people
are actively using Internet to consume information and to help them in buying
products online or offline. Although customer purchasing behaviour is a
systematic process, but it is still seemed to be impulsive in nature as people do
not invest a lot of time and rely heavily on what others are saying about the
product, based on which they make their buying decisions(Pappas, 2017).
According to one of the recent study conducted by the marketing research
agency Rauken, it was established that as many as 90% of the consumers read