eWOM anatomy of online product reviews: interaction effects of review number, valence, and star ratings on perceived credibility

Hong, Seoyeon; Pittman, Matthew

doi:10.1080/02650487.2019.1703386

Cited by 45 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Research has shown that ad recall improves during digital multitasking when even the secondary activity has some degree of accountability (Angell et al , 2016), further demonstrating how indirect social awareness alters consumer cognition during online activity. Some online stores may be perceived as private, but others that utilize popularity metrics and consumer reviews may induce some degree of social influence or accountability simply through the mention of other consumers’ purchases or reviews (Hong and Pittman, 2020). This adds layers to the public/private accountability dynamic because messages that were meant to be public may be shared privately, or vice versa.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accountability moderates the effects of egoistic and altruistic appeals in prosocial messages

Pittman

2020

JCM

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Purpose This paper aims to clarify the relationship between consumer accountability and responses to egoistic and altruistic appeals. It proposes that when consumers’ relationships with others are heightened in the form of accountability, different prosocial message appeals become effective. The study expands the understanding of how marketing may enhance the efficacy of prosocial campaign messages. Design/methodology/approach The study utilized three online experimental studies to test hypotheses across different population samples and health product categories. Self-benefit and other-benefit appeals were tested to decrease meat consumption (Study 1), increase vaccination intent (Study 2) and purchase oxybenzone-free sunscreen (Study 3). Results provide converging evidence for the proposed interaction between appeal type and accountability. Findings When consumers believe their choices will be known or discussed with others, they are more persuaded by other-benefit or altruistic appeals. Contrary to some existing research, Study 3 found that when public accountability was heightened, hybrid appeals were less effective than a solely altruistic appeal in generating purchase intent, digital engagement and attitude change, even controlling for social desirability. Research limitations/implications Public accountability was manipulated only in an online setting, and future studies should replicate with greater ecological validity. Results inform how scholars, brands and organizations should approach message efficacy in prosocial campaigns, particularly when an individual’s relationship with others may become salient. Practical implications The paper includes implications for the development and deployment of various organizational strategies such as changing the appeal depending on where a message will be viewed by consumers. Importantly for digital campaigns, maximum digital engagement arises from an altruistic appeal in a public context. Originality/value This paper fulfills an identified need to understand how organizations can successfully encourage prosocial consumer behavior, as well as bridges literature gaps on accountability and appeal efficacy.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accountability moderates the effects of egoistic and altruistic appeals in prosocial messages

Pittman

2020

JCM

Self Cite

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“…These reviews and ratings can be more helpful and insightful compared to traditional information sources (Mellinas et al, 2019), and they are recognized as the second most frequently used information source by Internet users (Bigne et al, 2020). Moreover, scholars claim that online ratings are relatively objective, considered numerical evidence of different attributes of a service or product, and reflect the extent of consumers' satisfaction (Hong & Pittman, 2020;Zhu et al, 2019). These ratings, which are scored on a scale between one and five, represent a summary of a consumer's opinion about a product or service that might encourage other consumers to make a purchase decision (Hong & Pittman, 2020), help them to gather information about different attributes in a utilitarian nature, and are used to evaluate companies' products and services (Thuy Tran et al, 2019a).…”

Section: Online Customer Reviews and Ratingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, scholars claim that online ratings are relatively objective, considered numerical evidence of different attributes of a service or product, and reflect the extent of consumers' satisfaction (Hong & Pittman, 2020;Zhu et al, 2019). These ratings, which are scored on a scale between one and five, represent a summary of a consumer's opinion about a product or service that might encourage other consumers to make a purchase decision (Hong & Pittman, 2020), help them to gather information about different attributes in a utilitarian nature, and are used to evaluate companies' products and services (Thuy Tran et al, 2019a). Thuy Tran et al (2019b) also found that online ratings have a significant effect on continuance intention and presented "the positive perceived usefulness and attitude towards the continuous usage of the relevant company" (p. 315).…”

Section: Online Customer Reviews and Ratingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Which Services are Effective on Recommendation of the Airline Companies

Doğan

Özkul

Kaya

2022

Advances in Hospitality and Tourism Research (AHTR)

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This study aimed to determine which services provided by airlines had an influence on recommendations. The authors collected passenger scores from the years between 2014 to 2019 concerning the top 10 airline companies of 2019 from the website www.AirlineQuality.com, which is the site most commonly used by passengers to evaluate airline companies and airports worldwide. In total, we analyzed 5512 ratings. Binary logistic regression was applied to test the hypothesis. According to the results, the most influential criterion is value for money. The second most important criterion is customer relations. Seat and cabin space and meals and beverages follow customer relations. The least important criterion related to recommendations is inflight entertainment. Previous studies were conducted using surveys. The present study used online ratings to determine airline attributes with the most and least influence on recommendations.

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“…Along with its importance, there has been a surge of online review studies in the eWOM literature over the last few decades. These studies have found abundant evidence that both the volume and valence of online reviews play a significant role in influencing consumer purchasing behaviors [24][25][26][27][28]. In particular, they have focused on examining how and why online reviews influence consumers' purchase decisions.…”

Section: Online Review Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Worse Than What I Read?” The External Effect of Review Ratings on the Online Review Generation Process: An Empirical Analysis of Multiple Product Categories Using Amazon.com Review Data

et al. 2021

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In this paper, we study the online consumer review generation process by analyzing 37.12 million online reviews across nineteen product categories obtained from Amazon.com. This study revealed that the discrepancy between ratings by others and consumers’ post-purchasing evaluations significantly influenced both the valence and quantity of the reviews that consumers generated. Specifically, a negative discrepancy (‘worse than what I read’) significantly accelerates consumers to write negative reviews (19/19 categories supported), while a positive discrepancy (‘better than what I read’) accelerates consumers to write positive reviews (16/19 categories supported). This implies that others’ ratings play an important role in influencing the review generation process by consumers. More interestingly, we found that this discrepancy significantly influences consumers’ neutral review generation, which is known to amplify the effect of positive or negative reviews by affecting consumers’ search behavior or the credibility of the information. However, this effect is asymmetric. While negative discrepancies lead consumers to write more neutral reviews, positive discrepancies help reduce neutral review generation. Furthermore, our findings provide important implications for marketers who tend to generate fake reviews or selectively generate reviews favorable to their products to increase sales. Doing so may backfire on firms because negative discrepancies can accelerate the generation of objective or negative reviews.

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eWOM anatomy of online product reviews: interaction effects of review number, valence, and star ratings on perceived credibility

Cited by 45 publications

References 80 publications

Accountability moderates the effects of egoistic and altruistic appeals in prosocial messages

Accountability moderates the effects of egoistic and altruistic appeals in prosocial messages

Investigating Which Services are Effective on Recommendation of the Airline Companies

“Worse Than What I Read?” The External Effect of Review Ratings on the Online Review Generation Process: An Empirical Analysis of Multiple Product Categories Using Amazon.com Review Data

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