The role of emotions and conflicting online reviews on consumers' purchase intentions

Abstract

Drawing on dual-process theories, this paper explains how the systematic and heuristic information processing of online reviews with conflicting information can influence consumers' purchase decision making. The study adopts major assumptions of complexity and configuration theory in employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on 680 TripAdvisor users to test the complex interrelationships between emotions and the systematic and heuristic cues used in processing reviews. The results show that the systematic and heuristic processing of online reviews can produce independent impacts on consumer decision making. Both processing routes can interact with each other-owing to the online reviews' mixed response sequence-to affect the domination of one route over the other. In the case of a positive-negative sequence, consumers mainly follow a heuristic processing route. In the reverse sequence, consumers' concerns about the credibility of the reviews leads them to think more deeply (systematic processing) and actively evaluate both the argumentation quality and the helpfulness of the online reviews.

An exploration into the practice of online service failure and recovery strategies in the Balkans

“…It is proposed that data are generalisable beyond the research setting if phenomena are examined across multiple units, and if one of units has similar conceptual foregrounds to other contexts (Maxwell, 2013;Yin, 2014). However, the advent of the Internet acknowledges the influence that online customers have on the perception constructs of others (Weitzl & Hutzinger, 2017;Ruiz-Mafe et al, 2018;Zhuang et al, 2018), posing the similarity that Kosovoan and Albanian online banking customers have to those of other contexts.…”

The Effect of Electronic Word of Mouth Communications on Intention to Buy: A Meta-Analysis

“…eWOM is considered as an important source of information influencing human behaviour (Filieri et al 2018;Filieri 2015;Floyd et al 2014;Nam et al 2018;Wang et al 2015a;Yan et al 2015), significantly affecting the way consumers make purchase decisions (Baber et al 2016;Jeong and Koo 2015;Lee et al 2017;Lin et al 2018;Mauri and Minazzi 2013). In recent studies, 93% of consumers indicated that online reviews (a type of eWOM communication) significantly influence their purchase decision (Fullerton 2017;Ruiz-Mafe et al 2018;Tata et al 2019).…”

Online Review Helpfulness and Firms’ Financial Performance: An Empirical Study in a Service Industry

“…In this work, ORH reflects the capability of a review to enable other consumers to better understand the performance and quality of a product or a service [71]. Perceived helpfulness relates to how potential customers perceive a peer-generated evaluation of a product, service, or brand as valuable and useful in their purchasing decision process [124]. The profusion and multiplication of ORs makes information about products and services easy to find but somehow difficult to process and judge, thus increasing cognitive costs [14].…”