Understanding online fake review production strategies

Extending the literature that has, thus far, mostly focused on the detection of fake online reviews, this paper explores a more fundamental yet hitherto-unanswered question: How do people go about creating fake reviews in the first place? To delve deeper, it further investigates the role of individuals’ cognitive style—the way one gathers, processes, structures, and applies information. While cognitive style was measured using a quantitative scale, a qualitative approach was adopted to explore fake review production strategies. Fifty participants imagined that they had been hired by a marketing agency to write fake reviews, completed the writing task, shared their experiences, and then filled out a cognitive style questionnaire. Writing fake reviews involved four stages: gathering information, assimilating information, drafting the fake review, and finalizing the fake review production. Through a cognitive lens, the paper uncovers three fake review production strategies and explains why someone would adopt a certain strategy.