Towards effective online review systems in the Chinese context: A cross-cultural empirical study

•Consumers’ reviewing behavior is affected by culture differences across countries.•Chinese are less engaged, less negative and value negation more in review systems.•Review volume, emotional tendency and spotlight review positively affect book sales.•Length and Reviewer rank negatively affect sales. Helpful votes have no impact.•Effective review systems in China need care about review format and voting system.

Online reviews, as one kind of quality indicator of products or service, are becoming increasingly important in influencing purchase decisions of prospective consumers on electronic commerce websites. With the fast growth of the Chinese e-commerce industry, it is thus indispensable to design effective online review systems for e-commerce websites in the Chinese context, by taking into account cultural factors. In this paper, we conduct two empirical studies on online reviews. Firstly, we study how culture differences across countries (i.e., China and the USA) impact the way in which consumers provide online reviews. Secondly, we investigate the impact of online reviews on product sales in the Chinese context, and show that directly copying the ideas of successful online review systems in the USA will deteriorate the effectiveness of the systems in China. Finally, we propose several suggestions for the development of effective online review systems in the Chinese context based on the results of our two empirical studies and the findings in previous studies.