Look Before you Leap! The Impact of Trust, Uncertainty, and Topics of Reviews on Search and Sales of Cars

While the research on online consumer reviews is immense, it has largely focused on products which can also be purchased online. However, the high level of digital engagement of individuals today along with a reported fall in physical store visits indicate that digital content can also affect products available only for purchase offline. This research examines the effects of trust, uncertainty, and topics extracted from online consumer reviews on two outcomes in the India car market, namely the search for online information and sales. The study finds that while uncertainty does not affect sales, and has a negative effect on online information search, trust is positively associated with both. The topics extracted using Latent Dirichlet Allocation from the review corpus fall under the category of experiential or functional. The different topics have direct and mediating impacts on search and sales.