How online review richness impacts sales: An attribute substitution perspective

Abstract

Richer forms of online reviews such as videos or follow‐on reviews convey ‘additional information and can attract consumers’ attention. However, prior studies focused mostly on the relationship between aggregated online reviews and sales. This paper investigates the impact of online review richness (i.e., reviews containing videos or follow‐on reviews) on sales. Leveraging attribute substitution theory, we conjecture that online review richness can provide heuristic cues in the online shopping environment to help consumers make better purchase decisions. Using data from http://jd.com, we found that reviews containing either videos or follow‐on reviews positively affect sales. In addition, different product types can also serve as heuristic cues to replace target cues, which can further affect how different forms of online review richness affect sales. We found that the impact of online review richness on sales is stronger for utilitarian products than for hedonic products, and stronger for negatively commented products than for positively commented products. Moreover, we conducted two online experiments and confirmed that the causal relationship is from online review richness to sales. The research findings offer practical implications for online retailers and constitute one of the first steps toward a better understanding of the relationship between online review richness and sales.

Influence of travel distance and travel experience on travelers' online reviews: price as a moderator

“…2.1.2 Dimensions to measure online review characteristics. Online review characteristics have received wide attention in the literature, including research on the consequences (Sparks and Browning, 2011;Yin et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2022b) and antecedents (Huang et al, 2017). According to the extant literature, we focus on two main characteristics of online reviews in our context, namely the quantitative attribute and media richness (Jiang and Benbasat, 2007a;Li et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2014;Park and Nicolau, 2015;Sparks and Browning, 2011).…”

“…Online review characteristics have received wide attention in the literature, including research on the consequences (Sparks and Browning, 2011; Yin et al. , 2021; Zhang et al.…”

“…Nowadays, it has been very common for travelers to share their own hotelstaying experiences on a travel review website such as TripAdvisor and dining experiences on a restaurant review platform such as Yelp (Filieri, 2016). Previous studies mostly investigate the consequences (Sparks and Browning, 2011;Yin et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2022b) and antecedents (He et al, 2020;Huang et al, 2017;Xu et al, 2019) of online review characteristics in terms of the quantitative attribute and media richness. Review rating is the most widely examined quantitative attribute, while visual and textual information are important types of media richness (Gao et al, 2018;Ho et al, 2017;Li, 2016;Zhang et al, 2016;Zhu et al, 2020).…”

“…Nowadays, it has been very common for travelers to share their own hotel-staying experiences on a travel review website such as TripAdvisor and dining experiences on a restaurant review platform such as Yelp (Filieri, 2016). Previous studies mostly investigate the consequences (Sparks and Browning, 2011; Yin et al. , 2021; Zhang et al.…”

Is my doctor around me? Investigating the impact of doctors’ presence on patients’ review behaviors on an online health platform

“…Online review platforms, such as Trip, Yelp, and TripAdvisor, have become increasingly prevalent, exerting significant impact on consumer decision‐making and business performance (e.g., Jia & Liu, 2018; Sun, 2012; Yin et al, 2021). Similarly, patients and health service providers are rapidly embracing online health platforms such as RateMDs, HealthGrades, and Vitals, which provide information about physicians and hospitals as well as allow patients to rate and review doctors (e.g., Hanauer et al, 2014; Saifee et al, 2020).…”