Effect of construal level on the drivers of online-review-helpfulness

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of purchase context on the relative importance of the drivers of online review helpfulness and also to explore the psychological process behind it. This will help the review management team of online retailers to create a better review ranking system that considers purchase context. Based on the theory of helpful behavior, we propose that review-helpfulness is driven by review characteristics such as review diagnosticity and vicarious expression in the review, and reviewer characteristics such as reviewer-trustworthiness. Moreover, following construal level theory, we explain the relative importance of the review and reviewer characteristics. Using four experimental studies, we find that, at low construal, review characteristics have higher relative importance than high construal, while reviewer characteristics have lower relative importance. The current study contributes to the literature on online review-helpfulness and the application of construal level theory in consumer behavior. The study proposes a unique method of ranking the reviews based on consumers’ purchase context and predicted psychological state while displaying them on the platforms. This is the first paper that explores the impact of construal level on review and reviewer characteristics on review-helpfulness.