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1 – 10 of over 2000Qinglong Li, Jaeseung Park and Jaekyeong Kim
The current study investigates the impact on perceived review helpfulness of the simultaneous processing of information from multiple cues with various central and peripheral cue…
Abstract
Purpose
The current study investigates the impact on perceived review helpfulness of the simultaneous processing of information from multiple cues with various central and peripheral cue combinations based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). Thus, the current study develops and tests hypotheses by analyzing real-world review data with a text mining approach in e-commerce to investigate how information consistency (rating inconsistency, review consistency and text similarity) influences perceived helpfulness. Moreover, the role of product type is examined in online consumer reviews of perceived helpfulness.
Design/methodology/approach
The current study collected 61,900 online reviews, including 600 products in six categories, from Amazon.com. Additionally, 51,927 reviews were filtered that received helpfulness votes, and then text mining and negative binomial regression were applied.
Findings
The current study found that rating inconsistency and text similarity negatively affect perceived helpfulness and that review consistency positively affects perceived helpfulness. Moreover, peripheral cues (rating inconsistency) positively affect perceived helpfulness in reviews of experience goods rather than search goods. However, there is a lack of evidence to demonstrate the hypothesis that product types moderate the effectiveness of central cues (review consistency and text similarity) on perceived helpfulness.
Originality/value
Previous studies have mainly focused on numerical and textual factors to investigate the effect on perceived helpfulness. Additionally, previous studies have independently confirmed the factors that affect perceived helpfulness. The current study investigated how information consistency affects perceived helpfulness and found that various combinations of cues significantly affect perceived helpfulness. This result contributes to the review helpfulness and ELM literature by identifying the impact on perceived helpfulness from a comprehensive perspective of consumer review and information consistency.
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Hongliu Li, Xingyuan Wang, Shuyang Wang, Wenkai Zhou and Zhilin Yang
The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the effects of the numerical cues (NC) used in online review comments on perceived review helpfulness and the underlying…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the effects of the numerical cues (NC) used in online review comments on perceived review helpfulness and the underlying psychological mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
An experimental design approach was employed to investigate the proposed research questions. Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. Mplus 7 and Stata 14.0 were used for data analysis.
Findings
Empirical findings support the positive correlation between the presence of NC in online review comments and perceived review helpfulness across different product categories. This relationship is mediated by two psychological responses of consumers: cognitive elaboration and credibility perception.
Research limitations/implications
This research adds to the existing literature by focusing on the value of NC in online review comments and how they can enhance perceived review helpfulness. Some practical implications are also addressed. For example, marketers can encourage consumers to post reviews that contain quantitative information to facilitate their target markets' comprehension of a product or brand.
Originality/value
Building on the previous literature, the work adds incremental knowledge on the role NC in online review comments play in affecting consumers' perceptions. In addition, the research uncovers the underlying psychological responses that mediate the relationship between NC in review comments and perceived review helpfulness.
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Hans Risselada, Lisette de Vries and Mariska Verstappen
This study aims to study to what extent the helpfulness votes others attach to a review affect a consumer’s perceived helpfulness of that review. In addition, the purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to study to what extent the helpfulness votes others attach to a review affect a consumer’s perceived helpfulness of that review. In addition, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether this social influence moderates the relationships among several content presentation factors and perceived helpfulness.
Design/methodology/approach
A choice-based conjoint experiment was carried out in which 201 respondents evaluated different reviews and chose the review they perceive as most helpful.
Findings
Consumers perceive reviews as more (less) helpful in the presence of clearly valenced positive (negative) helpfulness votes. In addition, helpfulness votes of others diminish the positive impact of structure and the negative impact of spelling errors.
Research limitations/implications
The experimental setup may limit the external validity of the study.
Practical implications
Providing a helpfulness button gives firms an instrument to offer content that consumers perceive as more useful and to exert some influence on the effects of content presentation factors on the review’s helpfulness.
Social implications
Consumers tend to follow other consumers’ opinions without forming their own opinion. Firms could misuse this tendency by hiring people to vote on reviews that are not necessarily helpful for consumers, but are helpful for the firm.
Originality/value
This study is the first to assess the extent to which social influence affects consumers’ evaluation of reviews. Given that consumers use helpfulness votes to distinguish reviews, it is important to understand to what extent these votes reflect the actual helpfulness of the information in the review and to what extent they reflect previous helpfulness votes.
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Zheng Wang, Ying Ji, Tao Zhang, Yuanming Li, Lun Wang and Shaojian Qu
With the continuous development of online shopping, analyzing the competitiveness of products in the fierce market competition is becoming increasingly crucial to position their…
Abstract
Purpose
With the continuous development of online shopping, analyzing the competitiveness of products in the fierce market competition is becoming increasingly crucial to position their own product development. However, the information overload brought by the network development makes it getting difficult to obtain the accurate competitiveness information. Therefore, competitiveness analysis research to combine with the perceived helpfulness study needs urgent solution. Furthermore, deviations exist in the three common methods of perceived helpfulness research. Finally, the traditional information fusion analysis only analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of products in competitiveness analysis without taking account of the competitive environment.
Design/methodology/approach
This study puts forward a novel prediction model of perceived helpfulness in conjunction of unsupervised learning and sentiment analysis techniques, to conduct the comparison with pros and cons of congeneric products.
Findings
This paper adopts Wilcoxon test to demonstrate the significant rectification of our competitiveness analysis to the traditional methods. It is noted that the positive reviews of the products in this study impact more on product word of mouth and competitiveness than negative ones.
Originality/value
To sum up, the results of this study benefit businesses in locating their dynamic market position with competitors in practice and exploring new method for long-term development strategic planning.
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M. Rosario González-Rodríguez, Rocio Martínez-Torres and Sergio Toral
This paper aims to explore the image of travel destinations after the visit by analysing sentiment orientation of the online reviews, and how this orientation, as well as other…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the image of travel destinations after the visit by analysing sentiment orientation of the online reviews, and how this orientation, as well as other electronic word of mouth (eWOM)’s credibility sources, can affect the perceived helpfulness of shared opinions measured through the helpfulness score.
Design/methodology/approach
Tourist destinations are increasingly affected by travel-related information shared through the Web. More and more people first check the previous travel experiences of other people to build their own destination image and to help them in their choice of destination. This paper analyses the shared opinions related to the city of Barcelona in a well-known eWOM website. The reviewers’ opinion and the credibility sources of eWOM are extracted from the web using a webscraper, while the sentiment score to analyse the discourse orientation (positive vs negative) is calculated using computer-based sentiment analysis techniques.
Findings
Online reviews’ users are reluctant to provide extreme polar opinions (very negative, very positive) to any travel subcategory (hotel, restaurant, attractions and night-life) of a tourist destination. The results obtained also reveal that eWOM’s perceived helpfulness grows with the expertise of the reviewer. However, the helpfulness score given to the reviews posted is not influenced by the sentiment orientation of the author’s opinion.
Research limitations/implications
This research is limited to the case study of Ciao, which is a well-known consumer platform, and the city of Barcelona, which is a top touristic destination. However, the approach proposed can be easily extended to other similar consumer platforms and cities using the same methodology.
Practical implications
Understanding the information posted in the media environment is a major concern in the field of marketing destination planning. Positive and negative eWOM offers potential consumers a clear picture on the tourist destination, and this information can be used by Destination Marketing Organisations to meet customers’ needs and expectations. The perceived helpfulness of reviews analysed in this paper can also help practitioners and scholars to understand those factors that make reviews more trustable.
Originality/value
From a methodological point of view, the main contribution of this research is the utilisation of an unstructured approach to the measurement of the destination image based on the sentiment analysis of shared opinions. From a theoretical point of view, the study relates the post-visit destination image with the pre-visit image formation process, using the sentiment orientation of the former and the perceived helpfulness of the latter.
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Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on the pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) emotion model, the emotional states of consumers embedded in online reviews can be described through three dimensions, that is, pleasure, arousal and dominance, rather than only the one-dimensional positive and negative polarity, as in previous studies. Therefore, this study aims to explore the effect of online review emotion on perceived review helpfulness based on these three basic emotional dimensions.
Design/methodology/approach
A lexicon-based method is developed to analyze PAD emotions of online reviews from JD.com. The zero-inflated negative binomial regression is utilized to empirically validate the study hypothesis. The authors examine the influence of pleasure, arousal, dominance, emotion diversity and emotion deviation on review helpfulness, as well as the moderating effect of product type on the relationship between all independent variables and online review helpfulness.
Findings
The study results show that the pleasure emotion impairs the helpfulness of online reviews, while the arousal and dominance emotions have a positive impact. Moreover, the authors find that compared with search products, the effects of pleasure, arousal and dominance on perceived helpfulness are strengthened for experience products. However, the emotional diversity and emotional deviation have opposite effects on the helpfulness of search products and experience products. Additionally, the results show that dominance emotion plays a more important role in the interaction effect.
Originality/value
The empirical findings confirm the applicability of PAD in the online review context and extend the existing knowledge of the influence of review emotion on helpfulness. A feasible scheme for extracting PAD variables from Chinese text is developed. The study findings also have significant implications for reviewers, merchants and platform managers of e-commerce websites.
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Chunfeng Chen and Depeng Zhang
Negative word-of-mouth has a variety of negative effects on companies. Thus, how consumers process and evaluate negative word-of-mouth is an important issue for companies. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Negative word-of-mouth has a variety of negative effects on companies. Thus, how consumers process and evaluate negative word-of-mouth is an important issue for companies. This research aims to investigate the effect of emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth on consumers' perceived helpfulness.
Design/methodology/approach
The research model was developed based on attribution theory. A four-study approach involving two field experiments and two online experiments was employed to examine the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that the emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth negatively affects altruistic motive attributions, while altruistic motive attributions positively affect perceived helpfulness and plays a mediating role in the relationship between the emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth and perceived helpfulness. Consumers' self-construal moderates the effects of emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth on altruistic motive attributions and perceived helpfulness, with the negative effects of emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth on altruistic motive attributions and perceived helpfulness being weaker for consumers with high interdependent self-construal than for those with high independent self-construal.
Originality/value
The findings not only have a significant theoretical contribution, deepening the understanding of the effects of negative word-of-mouth but also have useful implications for practitioners to improve the management of negative word-of-mouth.
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Yi Liu and Han-fen Hu
Consumers’ evaluation of online review helpfulness has been widely examined. The extant literature suggests that the attributes of review content (e.g. review length and…
Abstract
Purpose
Consumers’ evaluation of online review helpfulness has been widely examined. The extant literature suggests that the attributes of review content (e.g. review length and extremity) influence review helpfulness. However, review length cannot fully reflect the richness of the review content. Anchoring on information diagnosticity and extremity bias, this study aims to explore the effect of review comprehensiveness on its helpfulness.
Design/methodology/approach
Field observations were obtained from 11,812 online restaurant reviews on a popular restaurant review platform. A controlled experiment was conducted to further delineate the effect of review comprehensiveness.
Findings
Review comprehensiveness moderates the effects of review length and an extremely negative review on helpfulness. It also confirms that for reviews of the same length, one covering more aspects is perceived by consumers as more helpful.
Practical implications
Different aspects of information in a review can efficiently assist decision-making. The results suggest that review platforms can better design their interface by providing separate areas for different product aspects. The platform can then receive more comprehensive and helpful reviews and increase the diagnosticity of these.
Originality/value
The study enriches the literature by introducing review comprehensiveness and examining the joint effects of review length and comprehensiveness on helpfulness. It also contributes to the literature by indicating how to reduce the effect of review extremity.
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Wenjie Fan, Yong Liu, Hongxiu Li, Virpi Kristiina Tuunainen and Yanqing Lin
Drawing on attribution theory, the current paper aims to examine the effects of review content structures on online review helpfulness, focusing on three pertinent variables…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on attribution theory, the current paper aims to examine the effects of review content structures on online review helpfulness, focusing on three pertinent variables: review sidedness, information factuality, and emotional intensity at the beginning of a review. Moreover, the moderating roles of reviewer reputation and review sentiment are investigated.
Design/methodology/approach
The review sentiment of 144,982 online hotel reviews was computed at the sentence level by considering the presence of adverbs and negative terms. Then, the authors quantified the impact of variables that were pertinent to review content structures on online review helpfulness in terms of review sidedness, information factuality and emotional intensity at the beginning of a review. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression was employed to test the model.
Findings
The results reveal that review sidedness negatively affects online review helpfulness, and reviewer reputation moderates this effect. Information factuality positively affects online review helpfulness, and positive sentiment moderates this impact. A review that begins with a highly emotional statement is more likely to be perceived as less helpful.
Originality/value
Using attribution theory as a theoretical lens, this study contributes to the online customer review literature by investigating the impact of review content structures on online review helpfulness and by demonstrating the important moderating effects of reviewer reputation and review sentiment. The findings can help practitioners develop effective review appraisal mechanisms and guide consumers in producing helpful reviews.
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Minwoo Lee, Miyoung Jeong and Jongseo Lee
This paper aims to explore how emotional expressions embedded in online hotel reviews influence consumers’ helpfulness perceptions. In particular, this study develops and tests…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how emotional expressions embedded in online hotel reviews influence consumers’ helpfulness perceptions. In particular, this study develops and tests hypotheses analyzing empirical data with a text-mining method in the context of hotels to investigate how review valence influences the perceived helpfulness of online hotel reviews and to examine the role of negative emotional expressions embedded in online consumer reviews with respect to perceived helpfulness.
Design/methodology/approach
This study collected 520,668 online reviews involving 488 hotels in New York City (NYC) on Tripadvisor.com. Of these reviews, 69,202 reviews (13.29 per cent) that had received helpfulness votes were analyzed by a text mining method and negative binomial regression.
Findings
This study demonstrates that negative reviews are considered more helpful than positive reviews when potential customers read online hotel reviews for their future stay. However, when intensively negative emotions were expressed, the degree of helpfulness regarding negative reviews was diminished.
Originality/value
While emotional expressions prevail in online consumer reviews, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the consequences of emotional expressions in consumers’ information processing and decision-making. Due to the nature of service, given the inseparability of production and consumption, which often hinders the execution of flawless service, consumers tend to be more dependent on reviews to minimize any potential failures they may encounter later on. Therefore, this study fills a gap by demonstrating that negative reviews and emotional expressions play a more crucial role in consumers’ information processing and decision-making.
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