Do followers matter? : quantitative success factors of sale enhancing product review blogs

When analysing the impact of blogs on sales, previous research focused solely on qualitative factors (e.g. trust and credibility). This article, however, answers the question if one can also identify quantitative factors such as the number of followers on social media and similar. For this reason, a multiple regression analysis was conducted analysing eight quantitative factors of 56 product review blogs. This analysis shows that only two of eight quantitative factors have a statistically significant impact on the number of sales of an article reviewed by a blog. Therefore, the authors conclude that the intuitive reflex to always prefer influencers with a high number of followers is misleading and the established practice of using followers as a kind of currency becomes highly questionable.