When do consumers buy online product reviews? Effects of review quality, product type, and reviewer’s photo
Introduction
People buy things online. The US retail e-commerce spending reached 186.2 billion dollars in 2012, a remarkable 15% increase from the previous year (comScore, 2013). Likewise, the total value of online shopping in South Korea amounted to 26.7 billion dollars in 2011, nearly a threefold increase from 2005 (Statistics Korea, 2012). Among many unique features of online shopping, consumer product reviews, also referred to as electronic word of mouth (eWOM), have drawn much attention from both academics and the public as one of the most influential sources people rely on when making a purchase decision (Hu et al., 2006, Huang et al., 2009). For example, even the sheer number of reviews was found to affect the consumers’ willingness to buy the target product (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006, Duan et al., 2008), suggesting that people may take the quantity of reviews as an indicator of the product’s popularity or its value.
However, not all reviews are created equal. Research has shown that high-quality reviews, often operationalized as the ones including relevant, comprehensive, and accurate product-related information (Cheung & Thadani, 2012), exert greater influence on product evaluation (e.g., Lee, Park, & Han, 2008), purchase intention (e.g., Park, Lee, & Han, 2007), and evaluation of the website (e.g., Awad & Ragowsky, 2008), compared to low-quality reviews that simply reiterate the reviewers’ subjective feelings and opinions. Moreover, such effects were more or less likely to occur depending on several receiver-related factors, such as involvement (e.g., Lee et al., 2008) and prior knowledge (e.g., Park & Kim, 2008). For example, the quality of eWOM exerted greater influence when the consumers’ involvement was higher (Lee et al., 2008) and perceived informativeness of eWOM was more influential than perceived product popularity for more involved individuals (Park & Lee, 2008).
Previous studies, however, have not specified or empirically tested the process through which review quality alters the purchase intention. Based on the theory of reasoned action, which holds that behavioral intention is determined by an individual’s personal attitude and perceived norms concerning the target behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), the current study proposed a conceptual model in which product evaluation serves as a mediator between product quality and purchase intention. In addition, considering that (a) people tend to evaluate a speaker based on the speaker’s message quality (Slater & Rouner, 1996), and (b) a website featuring reviews can also be considered as another source of messages (Sundar & Nass, 2001), we also investigated if review quality affects the evaluations of the reviewers and the e-commerce website itself.
In attempts to refine the conceptual model further, the present study incorporated if and how two context-related factors, product type and reviewer’s photo, moderate the effects of review quality. With respect to the product type, we compared a search good and an experience good (Nelson, 1970, Nelson, 1974). Search goods are the products whose quality is easily assessed based on product information even before firsthand experience, whereas experience goods are the ones whose quality is difficult to evaluate before direct experience. Unlike previous studies examining for which product type eWOM is more or less persuasive (Park and Lee, 2009, Wei and Lu, 2013), the current study focused on if people process and respond to eWOM of varying quality differently, depending on the product type. In a similar vein, we also investigated if the availability of the reviewers’ photos alters the extent to which people systematically process the product reviews and respond differently to high- and low-quality reviews. .
In the following section, we first propose a mediation model to explain how review quality affects the readers’ purchase intention. Then, the effects of review quality on source evaluations are discussed, distinguishing the primary and the secondary sources. Lastly, product type and reviewer’s photo are introduced as two potential moderators of the review quality effects, with an emphasis on their respective influence on message processing.
Section snippets
Effects of review quality
In the literature on the effects of eWOM, review quality has often been defined as the persuasive strength of the message and commonly measured in terms of its relevance, timeliness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness (Cheung & Thadani, 2012). Not surprisingly, studies have shown that high-quality reviews exert greater influence on the readers’ purchase intention than low-quality reviews. For example, Park et al. (2007) operationalized high-quality reviews as the ones directly relevant to the
Pilot tests
Prior to the main experiment, two pilot tests were conducted. First, 34 undergraduates (17 men, 17 women; Age M = 24.35, SD = 1.35) participated in a study to select the product for each product type and the reviewers’ photos. A total of eight products were derived from previous research to represent each product category: a bicycle (Nelson, 1974), a computer game (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010), wine (Senecal & Nantel, 2004), and cosmetics (Wei & Lu, 2013) for experiential goods, and a printer (Weathers
Manipulation check
Participants were asked to indicate how well the following adjectives described the reviews they had read: very weak (1)—very strong (7), not convincing—very convincing, not relevant—very relevant (Munch & Swasy, 1988; α = .82, M = 3.88, SD = 1.28). Independent-sample t-tests confirmed that the manipulation was successful, with the high-quality reviews (M = 4.11, SD = 1.17) being rated significantly higher than the low-quality ones (M = 2.96, SD = 1.21), t(115) = −5.21, p < .001 for Alive Multi-Vitamin and for
Discussion
The present study investigated (a) how the quality of online product reviews affects the readers’ acceptance of the recommendation to purchase the target product as well as their evaluations of the review sources and (b) when such effects are more or less likely to occur. Positive high-quality reviews significantly enhanced the participants’ intention to purchase the product compared to the low-quality ones through more favorable product evaluations. When the target product was an experience
Acknowledgement
This research was financially supported in part by the Institute of Communication Research, Seoul National University.
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Current address: Department of Communication, Michigan State University, 404 Wilson Road, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States.