Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Amazon Books Sales: Empirical Evidence from India

Abstract

This study aims to assess the effect of online reviews on online book sales performance in the Indian context. A sales rank was used as a proxy measure for sales. The total sample size was 2028 books from the ‘bestseller’ and ‘recent’ book categories on Amazon.in. Cross-sectional analysis and difference-in-difference analysis approaches were adopted for data analysis. The results revealed that online reviews shared by the Indian consumers impact books sales, as the consumers prefer to analyze the books on the basis of available online reviews before making their purchase decision. Overall, the results indicated that reviews had a positive impact on the sales in both book categories.

Keywords

• electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM)
• online reviews
• online books sales
• Amazon.in
• India