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This paper aims to examine how two non-price cues – consumer rating and number of purchased social coupons (SCs) – serve as risk-relievers for high and low variety-seekers and subsequently impact their purchase decision for SCs offered by unfamiliar brands.

Participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk online panels participated in three scenario-based experiments.

Low (vs high) variety-seekers perceive greater risk and indicate lower likelihood of purchasing SCs offered by unfamiliar brands. Both high and low variety-seekers utilize the two non-priced cues – consumer rating and number of purchased SCs – as risk-relievers sequentially. That is, consumer rating constantly has a substantial impact on purchase likelihood for such SCs, whereas number of purchased SCs is influential only when consumer rating becomes ambiguous. Specifically, low (vs high) variety-seekers have a greater tendency to rely on number of purchased SCs in addition to consumer rating as a risk-reliever.

This paper examines cue utilization process in the SC context and suggests that high and low variety-seekers respond to the two non-price cues differently and sequentially. This provides theoretical insights on consumers’ cue utilization process and managerial insights regarding how managers could strategically handle the cues on SC provider websites. Further, this paper identifies situations where high variety-seekers may not prefer unfamiliar experiences and low variety-seekers may become more likely to embrace unfamiliar experiences.

The study investigates how the congruence of online deal popularity and star rating influences service quality expectation in online group buying (OGB) websites. It also investigates the role of authenticity perceptions of online cues.

Two experiments are used to assess the effects of congruence between deal popularity and star rating on service quality expectation for service deals in an OGB website.

The findings suggest that a combination of congruently high deal popularity and high star rating has a stronger effect on expected service quality than a combination of congruently low cues. The findings further suggest that expected service quality is greater under the combination of high deal popularity and low star rating than the combination of low deal popularity and high star rating, showing the differences between incongruent cue combinations. The findings also show the moderating effect of consumer authenticity perceptions of cues on the expected service quality.

The novel contribution of the study is to extend cue congruence theory to explain how congruent online information cues and the consumers' authenticity perceptions of the cues influence consumers' judgment of online deals. The contribution is validated empirically in the context of OGB. The findings advance current knowledge concerning how consumers use online information cues.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how rating mechanisms encourage emotional labor norms among sharing economy consumers.

This study follows a mixed-methods research design. Survey data from 207 consumers were used to quantify the impact of three distinct rating dimensions on a consumer behavioral outcome (emotional labor). In the second step, 18 focus groups with 94 participants were used to investigate the conditioning functions of ratings in more depth.

Rating mechanisms condition consumers toward performing socially desirable behaviors during sharing transactions. While consumers accept the necessity of bilateral rating mechanisms, they also recognize their coercive nature. Furthermore, the presence of bilateral rating mechanisms leads to negative outcomes such as annoyance and frustration.

This study contributes to sharing economy literature by examining bilateral rating mechanisms as a means of behavioral conditioning for consumers. This study points to improvements in platform design and informs theory on tripartite markets as well as trust.

Rating tools for the built environment were designed to engage consumers and enhance sustainability and resilience. However, the intended outcomes of these rating systems appear to have limited implementation in the residential new housing market in Australia. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ motivations and experiences who have purchased houses that are situated in a sustainability-based certified development and will have been required to comply with mandatory dwelling certification.

The paper explores the awareness and perception of sustainability ratings and whether the motivations for purchasing in the sustainably certified development have heightened their awareness of sustainability and the resilience of new housing. This has been investigated through a pilot study of consumers who have purchased land in a certified estate and built a new home, through an online survey.

The findings reveal that the rating systems are at present not having the desired influence as first thought; that is, to inform consumers of the sustainability of a dwelling or property and to instigate trust of the environmental credentials of the property.

This illuminating case study of participants who have purchased a sustainable rated development demonstrates that regardless of their concern for environmental issues, consumers have both low awareness and trust in the ratings. Despite this, consumers do seek value from these credentials to the overall property.

This study aims to illustrate the disconnect in engagement between developers, builders and new home buyers in relation to sustainability certification and implementation.

Product ratings and reviews are popular tools to support buying decisions of consumers. Many e-commerce platforms now offer product ratings and reviews as ratings and reviews are valuable for online retailers. However, luxury goods industry is somewhat slow to adapt to the digital terrain. The purpose of this paper is to answer “how luxury consumers see user-generated product ratings and reviews for their online shopping experience and what important factors or values are perceived by the luxury consumers when they shop online?”

To understand how luxury consumers use product ratings and reviews before buying online, a survey with a situational set up of variations of rating, review and price options in association with a number of hypothetical luxury goods was conducted among 421 global luxury consumers out of over 6,000 people. The study was carried out from September to October 2018 for six weeks in the form of online and mobile survey. User population is high net-worth individuals or luxury consumers derived from the author’s various professional and social networks and communities. Their geographical coverage would be global, but concentrated around the major cities.

The survey shows that ratings and reviews can be important source of information for luxury consumers. Online ratings and reviews are rated as helpful by 76.01% of the participants. People who chose the highly rated one (4.8/5) over the poorly rated (3.7/5) was 86.94%, while all else such as product category, star rating and price range are about the same. Feedback from the open question survey indicates that the perceived helpfulness of rating and review systems could vary. Comparing user reviews is time-consuming because of unstructured nature of contextual reviews and the relative nature of human perception on the rating scale.

There are two aspects of ratings and reviews playing an important role for luxury consumers’ buying decision. First, it is about helpfulness of collective rating score. Luxury consumers see a user-generated rating score and use the score when they make a choice even if the rating is not an absolute, but relative figure, not exactly like the star rating system in the hotel industry. Second, there is discrepancy between the status of the brand in association with its price position and perceived value as the industry does not cope with classifying their brands in any official star rating system.

Consumers need compact and concise information about the products they need. When there are only a few potential products left in their short wish-list, full user reviews can be helpful to get more details and general opinions about the products on the short list before making a final decision. In that regard, a primary indicator that will guide through the decision-making process of the luxury consumers would be the trustworthiness of user rating of each product in an aggregated score along with a potential use of sub-ratings, which has to be visible from the product landing page.

Even if there is a wide use and ubiquitous nature of product ratings and reviews in other consumer products, the author is curious about how luxury consumers use ratings and reviews for their buying decision because there are not that many researches done previously in spite of the importance of this issue. Luxury goods industry has hit €320bn in 2017 according to Bain and Co., and 25% of the trading volume will be replaced by the digital commerce by 2025.

Online reviews are often likely to be socially influenced by prior reviews. This study aims to examine key review and reviewer characteristics which may influence the social influence process.

Restaurant review data from Yelp.com are analyzed using an ordered logit model and text mining approach.

This study reveals that prior average review rating exerts a positive influence on subsequent review ratings for the same restaurant, but the effect is attenuated by the variance in existing review ratings. Moreover, social influence is stronger for consumers who had a moderate dining experience or invested less cognitive effort in writing online reviews. Compared to reviewers classified by Yelp as “elite,” non-elite reviewers appear more susceptible to the social influence of prior average review rating.

This study provides guidelines for mitigating the social influence of prior reviews and improving the accuracy of online product/service ratings, which will eventually enhance business and the reputation of online review platforms.

The findings from this study contribute to the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) literature and social influence literature in terms of the bidirectional nature of social influence on eWOM.

By delineating electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) into numerical rating and opinionated review, the purpose of this paper is to advance a research model that articulates how the provision of e-WOM can aid in alleviating consumers’ distrust of online service providers, a key determinant in the former’s adoption of the latter. The authors also endeavor to uncover the role gender plays in moderating the aforementioned relationship between e-WOM and distrust.

The research model was validated via a field survey administered on 115 college students and faculty members, who had been exposed to a custom-developed online restaurant review website. SmartPLS 2.0.M3 was employed to verify both the measurement and structural properties of the research model.

Distrust reduces male consumers’ perceptions of usefulness and ease of use toward an online service provider while increasing their adoption intention. For their female counterparts, distrust reduces both perceived ease of use and adoption intention for an online service provider. Additionally, for male consumers, only opinionated review aids in alleviating distrust. Conversely, both numerical rating and opinionated review aid in alleviating the distrust of female consumers. Moreover, in contrast to their female counterparts, male consumers are less susceptible to the influence of cognitive dissonance between numerical rating and opinionated review.

This study integrates distrust with the technology acceptance model (TAM) in an attempt to gain a deeper appreciation of technology acceptance behavior. Furthermore, this study builds on the confirmation bias theory to delineate e-WOM into numerical rating and opinionated review in order to better explicate variations in how males and females react to these two distinct forms of e-WOM. Consistent with the cognitive dissonance theory, the distinction between numerical rating and opinionated review enables further exploration of the impact of cognitive dissonance between these two forms of e-WOM on male and female consumers’ distrust of online service providers. Finally, this study unveils contrasting conflict resolution strategies adopted by male and female consumers to cope with cognitive dissonance in e-WOM.

Findings from this study yield prescriptions for practitioners in terms of how e-WOM can be harnessed to alleviate consumers’ distrust of online service provider. Whereas it is crucial for online service providers to draw on opinionated review to reduce distrust for male consumers, numerical rating should be emphasized for female consumers. This study also sensitizes practitioners to the drawback of providing both numerical rating and opinionated review at the same time due to the potential for cognitive dissonance.

This study is the first to: position distrust within the well-accepted TAM in order to enrich the understanding of technology acceptance behavior; testify to the importance of delineating between numerical rating and opinionated review due to the possibility of cognitive dissonance between these two distinct forms of e-WOM, as well as; uncover contrasting conflict resolution strategies adopted by male and female consumers to cope with cognitive dissonance in accordance with the confirmation bias theory.

The aim of this research is to theorize and demonstrate that analyzing consumers’ text product reviews using text mining can enhance the explanatory power of a product sales model, particularly for hedonic products, which tend to generate emotional and subjective product evaluations. Previous research in this area has been more focused on utilitarian products.

Our text clustering-based procedure segments text reviews into multiple clusters in association with consumers’ numeric ratings to address consumer heterogeneity in taste preferences and quality valuations and the J-distribution of numeric product ratings. This approach is novel in terms of combining text clustering with numeric product ratings to address consumers’ subjective product evaluations.

Using the movie industry as our empirical application, we find that our approach of making use of product text reviews can improve the explanatory power and predictive validity of the box-office sales model.

Marketing scholars have actively investigated the impact of consumers’ online product reviews on product sales, primarily focusing on consumers’ numeric product ratings. Recently, studies have also examined user-generated content. Similarly, this study looks into users’ textual product reviews to explain product sales. It remains to be seen how generalizable our empirical results are beyond our movie application.

Whereas numeric ratings can indicate how much viewers liked products, consumers’ reviews can convey why viewers liked or disliked them. Therefore, our review analysis can help marketers understand what factors make new products succeed or fail.

Primarily our approach is suitable to products subjectively evaluated, mostly, hedonic products. In doing so, we consider consumer heterogeneity contained in reviews through our review clusters based on their divergent impacts on sales.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of volume and valence of online movie ratings on consumers’ risk perceptions and purchase intentions, as well as the moderating impact of cultural values, in four emerging Asian markets.

Using a survey questionnaire, data was collected from 204 respondents for Study 1 and 376 respondents for Study 2 in four emerging markets (China, India, Chinese Macau, and the Philippines). The analysis was conducted using analysis of variance.

Results indicate that moviegoers express higher risk perceptions and lower purchase intentions when the volume of online ratings is smaller and when the valence (average rating) is lower. These effects are enhanced for more conservative consumers, but are not influenced by consumers’ self-transcendence. Indian consumers were found to be more conservative than the other Asian consumers in the study.

Taken together, the findings make significant contributions to the literature on services marketing, online ratings, cultural values, risk perceptions, and emerging markets. In contrast to correlational studies, the experimental design controls for potential confounding factors and provides evidence of causality between online ratings and consumer responses. In addition, by using cultural values, the authors avoid the problems associated with using national culture scores to characterize individuals or sub-groups within countries.

The study suggests that despite the geographical proximity of these emerging markets, key discernible differences exist due to the moderating impact of cultural values on consumer responses. When targeting consumers in relatively conservative markets (e.g. India), a large volume of positive online ratings may lower consumers’ risk perceptions and increase their purchase intentions.

This study is one of the pioneering studies examining the impacts of volume and valence of online movie ratings on consumers’ risk perceptions and purchase intentions in emerging Asian markets.

Both consumer and corporate credit ratings agencies played a major role in the US subprime mortgage crisis. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion deployed a formalized scoring system to assess individuals in mortgage origination, mortgage pools then were assessed for securitization by Moody's, S&P, and Fitch relying on expert judgment aided by formal models. What can we learn about the limits of formalization from the crisis? We discuss five problems responsible for the rating failures – reactivity, endogeneity, learning, correlated outcomes, and conflict of interest – and compare the way consumer and corporate rating agencies tackled these difficulties. We conclude with some policy lessons.