Fake Consumer Reviews in the Context of Trust, Detection, and Governance

Deceptive consumer reviews represent a growing threat to consumer trust, platform credibility, and the integrity of digital marketplaces. Therefore, this research undertakes a systematic review of the literature on fake consumer reviews. Rather than treating fake reviews only as a detection problem, this review shows that the field has developed across two connected streams: (1) technical approaches to identifying deceptive content and (2) consumer and platform research on trust, credibility, governance, and marketplace consequences. By combining bibliometric mapping, thematic analysis, and systematic coding, this synthesis identifies the main research clusters and theoretical lenses used in the literature, including deception, persuasion, signaling, information asymmetry, and source‐credibility perspectives, and shows how these frameworks can be integrated to explain both the production and effects of deceptive reviews. This review also contributes an antecedents–mechanisms–consequences framework that links firm, platform, consumer, cultural, and technological drivers of fake reviews with the processes through which deceptive reviews are produced, disseminated, detected, and interpreted. The findings show that fake reviews distort consumer decision‐making, erode trust, damage brand reputation, weaken platform credibility, and increase the need for stronger verification, disclosure, and regulatory mechanisms. For consumer studies, this research reframes fake reviews as a multidimensional issue of consumer welfare, encompassing deception, trust erosion, digital literacy, platform governance, and market transparency. The article concludes with a focused future research agenda on trust repair, explainable detection technologies, platform governance, and the psychological and cultural motivations behind deceptive reviewing.