Blogs and Consumer Reviews: An Analysis of Consumer Behavior

This essay examines the significant influence of blogs and consumer reviews on consumer decision-making processes in the digital age. It highlights the shift towards online sources for product information, emphasizing the role of blogs and customer reviews in building trust and shaping purchasing choices. The essay details how businesses leverage blogs for content marketing, SEO, and customer relationship management, while also exploring the impact of online reviews on brand authenticity and customer expectations. It further analyzes the importance of both positive and negative reviews, underscoring their role in informing consumers and managing brand reputation. The essay concludes by emphasizing the critical role of blogs and online reviews in contemporary marketing, urging businesses to prioritize their online presence and manage their online image to effectively reach and influence consumers.

Running head: BLOGS AND CONSUMER REVIEWS
BLOGS AND CONSUMER REVIEWS
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1BLOGS AND CONSUMER REVIEWS
The amount of time a customer spends reading blogs and customer reviews has increased
significantly in recent times. Blogging was first taken off in the late 1990s by the people with an
intension to share their thoughts, opinions, feelings and experiences about a particular thing.
However, in current days, near about each and every business conduct its business practices
through making use of the blogging in order to increase its digital presence and inevitably for
increasing its bottom line (Vergeer, Hermans and Sams 2013). With the same, along with the
growth in technology and internet, the online customer reviews has become one of the important
source of information which helps the customers for making purchase decision. They are really
important for the marketing campaign. This paper will elaborate on how blogging and consumer
reviews online have become an influential indicator of a consumer's decision making process.
Along with an increase in the digital channels, customers are gradually turning online for
gathering information at each and every point along their path for purchasing. While making a
purchase of the product that they wish to buy, blogs and customer reviews are the most trusted
source of information regarding the particular product (Thurman and Walters 2013). Whether it
is a small business or any multination company, blogging has gradually become integral to their
online content marketing strategy in the recent days. There are several different ways in which
blogging has influenced the business today. Blogging gives you the opportunities in order to
create a pertinent content for the customers. Near about every companies use this tactic of
blogging for driving the traffic back to their website. Businesses now-a-days are present in many
social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterst, Twitter, Linkedln and Instagram. They posts
links here along with relevant and attracting visual for attracting people towards its business
(Guan et al. 2014). This gives the social followers a reason for clicking through the company
website.

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In the today’s internet-based society, every business has to have strong online presence
for standing out among their competitors. Blogging has numerous advantages right form
increasing the SERP or SEO (Fishkin and Hogenhaven 2013). A fresh content is always a key
for beating the competitors in search engine results page. When people go for searching for a
business or professional in the industry, they want their name to come up to the top list. It is to be
noted that there is no better way of adding relevant content and information to the company
website on a daily basis than utilizing a blog. The well written articles and contents demonstrate
the company as the industry leader. Through postings of the topics that resonate with the market
and show their knowledge, the businesses today are marketing their skills for their services and
products.
With the same, the blogs also help in building better customer relationship (Zheng et al.
2015). They provide another source in order to deepen the relation with the customers. Through
connecting directly with the company through logs, the clients and customers are now able to get
know the product and services of a business and that too with a convenience of sitting in home. It
helps in building trust among the employees by being one of the major sources of information
regarding a product and service or about an entire company (Cabiddu, De Carlo and Piccoli
2014). It is a fact that customers always like to be well informed and they really appreciate that
the company is trying to teach them through blogs.
Blogs are one of the best places where the customers want to go and read about the
reviews on a particular or service that they seek to buy well before making a purchase decision.
This is because in the modern worlds, the companies all over the world mainly make use of blogs
in order to make people aware of their products and the information regarding them. There are a

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large number of detailed information provided along with lots of detailed reviews on the product
which are written by the content experts and are posted on the blogs.
As the importance of blogs have risen to a great extent, many of the companies now hire
candidates in order to write reviews about their service and products for posting on the blogs
particularly the ones that are greatly influential along with lots of visitors. Blogs are highly
beneficial for the companies for influencing the people for buying products on their blogs (Scott
2015). According to the recently conducted surveys, about 84 percent of the customers in the
developed and developing countries purchase products after they visit different sites on internet
for gaining information about the products. Also, the people who like to read blogs are mostly
from the age range of 25 to 34 years (Hansson, Wrangmo and Solberg 2013). The consumers
who fall in these groups seek to depend on those blogs as they think that they are the most vital
resources while coming to make a final decision for buying something. It is an evident that the
three categories of the most commonly read blogs are the ones about the food, drink, culture,
entertainment and hobbies. It is also estimated that every one out of four people buy things from
the blog that they read and half of such purchases have a value in between one to fifty dollars.
Also, the modern generation tends to buy lots of their products from the online marketing and
sites where they buy different kind of stuffs for themselves and their near and dear ones.
The main reason for making use of blog as a marketing tool in the current business world
is that it is both reliable and informative for the customers. If one surf web, he is sure to come
across of different influential bloggers along with large following of the subscribers. Such blogs
hire efficient experts for writing an in depth views of varieties of products in the field of they are
expertise. In order to motivate the people for reading their blogs, they make use of real images
and videos with are both attractive and eye catching and they demonstrate each and every aspects

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of the products. In those blogs, every detailed feature of the products are discussed in a brief
manner, which makes its very informative for the consumers to make their decision for buying a
product that they wish to.
In today’s world it has become much easier than even to make a comparison and get a
more in depth knowledge as well as to choose in between similar brand offerings depending on
the online reviews. The numbers of online customers who do trust and read the online reviews
are greatly increasing. As stated earlier, 88% of the customers depend on the blogs and customer
reviews before making a purchase decision (Lu, Chang and Chang 2014). These blogs and online
reviews works as personal recommendation that is astounding. Although most of the reviews are
posted by the strangers, still customers relies on these reviews a lot more than other thing. It is a
known fact that when it comes down to reviews, customers tend to hear about the experiences of
the people like them. Hence, the online reviews could surely be one of the best marketing tools
present in the current world. Online reviews are the things that are potent enough to push the
customers to making purchase from consideration. People in fact seek reviews more than sales
person. Hence, the authenticity of the online reviews present today has led to a great change in
the way customers get information on a particular product or service. In earlier days, the
customers used to turn to a sales man when any question arises onto their mind about the
durability or maintenance of a product. This has changed to a great extent today. Now, if people
need any detailed insights about a brand that they need to buy, they tend to turn to the online
reviews for getting the answers to their questions. Often, the customers want to try a new product
from a new brand, but they still stick with their old favorites as they are well aware of what to
expect. In modern days, the online reviews take out the mystery of switching to a new brand.
Even while purchasing from a brand they already know, about 67% of the total women considers

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the online review effective and influential and just about 2% of the customers say that they rarely
tend to seek out of the reviews for the services that they want to purchase (Mai 2016). Also, it is
also an evident that the women who say that they check for the online reviews for the brands that
they know, they do so for two primary reasons- the one is that they want to see if the others have
has a same experience and the second is that they already have had enough of the same products
in their houses for years, but they still wants to know if a better option do exists or not.
About 93% of the customers says that the online reviews do influence their purchase
decision (Mauri and Minazzi 2013). Customers not only just give the online reviews a glance for
seeing how many reviews are present overall and what is the total star rating of the particular
product, in fact they dig deep into the entire content of the reviews in order to get a detailed
information regarding the customer experience. If there are now reviews present, there are fewer
possibilities of the potential customers to making the purchase. In fact, according to the recent
data, about 35 percent of the customers are less likely to buy and about 32 percent holds off their
buying decision until they conduct further research (Wirtz et al. 2013).
Now, comes the subject of negative customer reviews. It is to note that negative reviews
are not all bad. It is true that for a any business managing its reputation in the market is very
important. One can often hear that in business, good news travels fast but the bad news travels
faster and as it is known that 90% of the customers are likely to research online before making
purchases (Hsu, Chuan-Chuan Lin and Chiang 2013). Hence, online reputation is seriously very
important and all the businesses must make it their top most priority. The negative reviews do
highlights the deficiencies of the products and services that the customer could not have noticed
earlier. However, it is also true that they also has the potential to build the authenticity of the
brand through showing the customers that they could trust the positive reviews of the company

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as this reflects that they allow their customers to voice both the sides of their experiences. With
the same, negative reviews also sometimes helps in managing the customer expectations. Like,
for example, if a review about a particular dress says that “size was larger than expected”, it can
educate the other customers for purchasing the smaller sixe than they would have bought
originally.
To sum up, it can be said that blogs and online consumer reviews do play a very
important part in online marketing and with the same; they do influence the consumer decision
making process. If a company wants to sell its product or services and gain a more number of
customers, it must start a blog for promoting them. This is because in this modern world, people
still put a lot of emphasis on what others say about a particular product right before making a
purchase. Hence, it is very vital for the business today to put much emphasis on and give more to
the online reviews and maintain a clean image of them online. No matter whether it be a negative
or is a positive, as because negative reviews are not all about bad and they in fact, shows that the
brand is clear to its customers and it has nothing to hide from them.

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