Online Reviews as a Genre: A semiotic analysis of Amazon.com 2010-2014 reviews on the categories 'Clothing' and 'Electronics'

Abstract

The online reviews have a pivotal role in electronic purchasing decision making, both from the perspective of consumers and commercial players. A corpus of 700 reviews under the categories "Electronics" and "Clothing" extracted from Amazon.com from January 2010 to July 2014 was analyzed to construct online reviews as a genre, both for its application in future studies and for its commercial use in the industry. The current study found that the online reviews of the corpus are predominantly positive testimonies which are built as general truths. They focus on positive aspects, such as the advantages and the reaffirmation of the buying decision made and are able to reinforce online reviews users' purchase intention. They are the projected experience of an enunciated self and their personal story with the products. They have spontaneous effects and transfer informal aspects of close and conversational spaces to an unknown larger audience. This instantaneous effect, which results in spontaneity, pretends that there are no interests involved, that the poster contributes to the community with statements that are not formal or professional. That is, they reduce the perceived risk of the users by migrating from a seller discourse to an altruistic peer-to-peer guidance, reinforced by not directly interpellating the figure of the enunciatee. In addition, the words and expressions of numerosity operated like deictics, and generated experience anchors with their neutral references. The terms of numerosity apart from turning tangible objects and have a high descriptive potential, they were e-commerce pointers of experience, precise affirmations, and reduced the risk of trusting on online reviews. This combination of findings provides some support for the conceptual premise that online reviews operate as social markers of e-commerce interfaces. The online reviews have a pivotal role in electronic purchasing decision making, both from the perspective of consumers and commercial players. A corpus of 700 reviews under the categories "Electronics" and "Clothing" extracted from Amazon.com from January 2010 to July 2014 was analyzed to construct online reviews as a genre, both for its application in future studies and for its commercial use in the industry. The current study found that the online reviews of the corpus are predominantly positive testimonies which are built as general truths. They focus on positive aspects, such as the advantages and the reaffirmation of the buying decision made and are able to reinforce online reviews users' purchase intention. They are the projected experience of an enunciated self and their personal story with the products. They have spontaneous effects and transfer informal aspects of close and conversational spaces to an unknown larger audience. This instantaneous effect, which results in spontaneity, pretends that there are no interests involved, that the poster contributes to the community with statements that are not formal or professional. That is, they reduce the perceived risk of the users by migrating from a seller discourse to an altruistic peer-to-peer guidance, reinforced by not directly interpellating the figure of the enunciatee. In addition, the words and expressions of numerosity operated like deictics, and generated experience anchors with their neutral references. The terms of numerosity apart from turning tangible objects and have a high descriptive potential, they were e-commerce pointers of experience, precise affirmations, and reduced the risk of trusting on online reviews. This combination of findings provides some support for the conceptual premise that online reviews operate as social markers of e-commerce interfaces.