Do buyers express their true assessment? Antecedents and consequences of customer praise feedback behaviour on Taobao

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a research model that incorporated antecedents of praise feedback behaviour (fear of confrontation and incentive for reducing nuisance costs), praise feedback behaviour (deliberatively praise feedback, casual praise feedback, and true compliment feedback) and consequences (trust and repurchase intention). Design/methodology/approach A structural equation model was employed to test the relationships of the research model using survey data collected from 398 Taobao consumers. Findings The results showed that fear of confrontation and incentive for reducing nuisance costs had a significant positive influence on deliberatively praise feedback and true compliment feedback, respectively, and both antecedents had a significant positive influence on casual praise feedback of consumers. It also showed that trust was influenced negatively by deliberatively praise feedback, and positively by casual praise feedback and true compliment feedback. Meanwhile, deliberatively praise feedback and true compliment feedback were found to have negative and positive influences on repurchase intention, respectively. Originality/value This research was a pilot study to identify a three-dimension conceptualization of praise feedback behaviour from the perspective of customer satisfaction, and to understand positive review bias from the perspective of input processes.