Buyer behavior · Observational clickstream study of purchases and reviews, supplemented by supervised machine-learning models trained and validated with Amazon Mechanical Turk product-pair labels to identify complementary and substitutive products.
On the Spillover Effects of Online Product Reviews on Purchases: Evidence from Clickstream Data
Information Systems Research · 2021
Summary
Mean ratings of substitutive products negatively affect focal-product purchase while ratings of complementary products have a positive effect; spillovers are stronger on mobile, across different brands for substitutive products, among less experienced consumers, and when rating variance is lower.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
Use it as a product, platform or behavior mechanism reference rather than a direct forecast for a SaaS funnel.
Reported result
What the study found
Mean ratings of substitutive products negatively affect focal-product purchase while ratings of complementary products have a positive effect; spillovers are stronger on mobile, across different brands for substitutive products, among less experienced consumers, and when rating variance is lower.
Research question
What the authors investigated
How do online reviews of products viewed alongside a focal product spill over into focal-product purchases, and how do complementarity/substitution, device, brand, experience, and rating variance moderate the effect?
Design
Observational clickstream study of purchases and reviews, supplemented by supervised machine-learning models trained and validated with Amazon Mechanical Turk product-pair labels to identify complementary and substitutive products.
Sample and setting
Clickstream data from a large retailer, examining reviews of covisited products and purchases of a focal product; moderators include device (mobile versus PC), brand relationship, consumer experience, and rating variance.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Not stated in the publisher abstract.
Research sources
INFORMS states that the study uses clickstream data from a large retailer and reports negative substitutive-product and positive complementary-product review spillovers, with the listed moderation patterns. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; profile summarizes the accessible record and does not claim independent review of inaccessible full text.