A Corpus Based Study: Analysis of the Positive Reviews of Amazon.com Users

Lokman Altun

Abstract


This study aims to investigate online consumer reviews on Amazon.com. Thanks to this study, learners can make use of this study when they prefer a corpus based learning strategy especially for the product reviewers. This study includes two aspects of review structure. The frequency of adverbs, adjectives and verbs that are mostly used together are main focus in this study. Adjectives and adverbs that are used more and which collocations are used more with that adjective and adverbs were examined. In addition, it was examined which verbs are used mostly when people try to show their phrases. This study is quantitative study with survey design. In order to collect data, different Apple products were analyzed such as iPhone 7, Apple Watch 1 and Apple Watch Series 3, Apple Airpods. An analysis of 1,587 reviews which were 4 or 5 stars from Amazon.com across four products pointed out that online consumer reviews have a very effective role in terms of the sales of products. To assure the validity and reliability of the process, a teacher who has a very good knowledge about linguistic checked reviews and came to an agreement with the researcher. Descriptive analysis was used in this study by calculating frequency of adverbs, adjectives and verbs. It was found out that consumers generally prefer specific verbs, adverbs and adjectives in a specific context. This study may help to understand the linguistic background of consumers. As a result of the study, it was seen that some adjectives, adverbs and verbs were mostly chosen deliberately by the users. This study also resulted that these words have some specific collocation words. These collocation words were used by the users both before and after that adjective, adverb and verb. As an implication for this study, new writing topics that this study has suggested can be integrated to the curriculum. These topics can be seen as a new way for writing lessons.

Keywords


Consumer Reviews, Corpus-based Study, Real Life English, English in Use, Comment Analysis

Full Text:

PDF

References


Avery, C., Resnick, P., & Zeckhauser, R. (1999). The market for evaluations. American Economic Review, 89(3), 564-584.

Baayen, H., & Lieber, R. (1991). Productivity and English derivation: a corpus-based study. Linguistics, 29(5), 801-844.

Ba, S. & Pavlou, P. A. (2002). Evidence of the effect of trust building technology in electronic markets: Price premiums and buyer behavior. MIS quarterly, 243-268.

Bolton, K., Nelson, G., & Hung, J. (2002). A corpus-based study of connectors in student writing: Research from the International Corpus of English in Hong Kong (ICE-HK). International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 7(2), 165-182.

Chen, P. (2008). “All Reviews Are Not Created Equal: The Disaggregate Impact of Reviews on Sales on Amazon.com,” working paper, Carnegie Mellon University retrieved from http://ssrn.com/abstract=918083).

Chevalier, J. A., & Mayzlin, D. (2006). The effect of word of mouth on sales: Online book reviews. Journal of marketing research, 43(3), 345-354.

Clemons, E. (2006). When online reviews meet hyperdifferentiation: A study of the craft beer industry. Journal of management information systems, 23(2), 149-171.

Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. (2002). Helping crisis managers protect reputational assets: Initial tests of the situational crisis communication theory. Management Communication Quarterly, 16(2), 165-186.

Corson, D. (1997). The learning and use of academic English words. Language learning, 47(4), 671-718.

Coxhead, A. (2011). The Academic Word List 10 years on: Research and teaching implications. Tesol Quarterly, 45(2), 355-362.

Dellarocas, C. (2007). Strategic manipulation of internet opinion forums: Implications for consumers and firms. Management science, 52(10), 1577-1593.

Ghose, A., and Ipeirotis, P. 2006. “Designing Ranking Systems for Consumer Reviews: The Impact of Review Subjectivity on Product Sales and Review Quality,” in Proceedings of the 16th Annual Workshop on Information Technology and Systems retrieved from http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~panos/publications/ wits2006.pdf

Godes, D., & Mayzlin, D. (2004). Using online conversations to study word-of-mouth communication. Marketing science, 23(4), 545-560.

Harris, J., & Gupta, P. (2008). 'You should buy this one!'The influence of online recommendations on product attitudes and choice confidence. International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2(2), 176-189.

Lee, J., Park, D. H., & Han, I. (2007). The effect of negative online consumer reviews on product attitude: An information processing view. Electronic commerce research and applications, 7(3), 341-352.

Li, Y., & Qian, D. D. (2010). Profiling the Academic Word List (AWL) in a financial corpus. System, 38(3), 402-411.

Kerkhof, P., & van Noort, G. (2010). Third party internet seals: reviewing the effects on online consumer trust. In Encyclopedia of e-business development and management in the global economy (pp. 701-708). IGI Global.

Kumar, N., & Benbasat, I. (2006). Research note: the influence of recommendations and consumer reviews on evaluations of websites. Information Systems Research, 17(4), 425-439.

Martínez, I. A., Beck, S. C., & Panza, C. B. (2009). Academic vocabulary in agriculture research articles: A corpus-based study. English for specific purposes, 28(3), 183-198.

Mowery, D., Smith, H., Cheney, T., Stoddard, G., Coppersmith, G., Bryan, C., & Conway, M. (2017). Understanding depressive symptoms and psychosocial stressors on Twitter: a corpus-based study. Journal of medical Internet research, 19(2).

Mudambi, S. M., & Schuff, D. (2010). Research note: What makes a helpful online review? A study of customer reviews on Amazon. com. MIS quarterly, 185-200.

Nation, I. S. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Ernst Klett Sprachen.

Park, C., & Lee, T. M. (2009). Information direction, website reputation and eWOM effect: A moderating role of product type. Journal of Business research, 62(1), 61-67.

Park, D. H., & Kim, S. (2008). The effects of consumer knowledge on message processing of electronic word-of-mouth via online consumer reviews. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 7(4), 399-410.

Pavlou, P. A., & Gefen, D. (2004). Building effective online marketplaces with institution-based trust. Information systems research, 15(1), 37-59.Piller, C. 1999. Everyone is a critic in cyberspace. Los Angeles Times (December 3).

Utz, S., Kerkhof, P., & Van Den Bos, J. (2012). Consumers rule: How consumer reviews influence perceived trustworthiness of online stores. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 11(1), 49-58.

Utz, S. (2009). 'Egoboo'vs. altruism: the role of reputation in online consumer communities. New Media & Society, 11(3), 357-374.

Valipouri, L., & Nassaji, H. (2013). A corpus-based study of academic vocabulary in chemistry research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(4), 248-263.

Vongpumivitch, V., Huang, J. Y., & Chang, Y. C. (2009). Frequency analysis of the words in the Academic Word List (AWL) and non-AWL content words in applied linguistics research papers. English for Specific Purposes, 28(1), 33-41.

Wang, J., Liang, S. L., & Ge, G. C. (2008). Establishment of a medical academic word list. English for Specific Purposes, 27(4), 442-458.

Ward, J. (2009). A basic engineering English word list for less proficient foundation engineering undergraduates. English for Specific Purposes, 28(3), 170-182.

Whyte Jr, W. H. (1954). The web of word of mouth. Fortune, 50(5), 140-143.

Wolf, F., & Gibson, E. (2005). Representing discourse coherence: A corpus-based study. Computational Linguistics, 31(2), 249-287.

Zhu, F., & Zhang, X. (2006). The influence of online consumer reviews on the demand for experience goods: The case of video games. ICIS 2006 Proceedings, 25.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.10n.1p.123

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.