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Many online review sites, such as TripAdivisor.com, encourage review posters to upload a profile photo to improve the perceived reliability of online reviews. This study aims to examine the roles of reviewer profile photos in the online review generation and consumption processes.

Data were collected via Amazon MTurk. Two experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 had a sample size of 106 respondents. In Study 1, this paper examined the role of a reviewer profile photo in the online review generation process. Study 2 had a sample size of 482 respondents. In Study 2, this paper examined the role of a reviewer profile photo in the online review consumption process under two different circumstances, namely, comprehensive and incomprehensive review text.

The findings show that reviewer profile photos play different roles when consumers generate online reviews versus when they consume reviews. In the review generation process, reviewers are more likely to upload a profile photo to improve the credibility of their reviews. On the other hand, in the review consumption process, reviewer profile photos do not contribute to an increase in the perceived review helpfulness.

If the readers have difficulty processing the review content, review profile photos play a critical role in determining perceived review helpfulness. This study provides both theoretical and managerial implications by indicating how reviewer profile photos play different roles in online review posting and consuming behavior.

While online reviews are of paramount importance in brand evaluations and purchase decisions, the impact of a reviewer’s attractiveness is not well understood. To bridge that gap, this paper aims to explore how physical attractiveness cues through profile photos influence customers’ brand evaluations.

The first study assesses the impact of attractiveness and review valence on brand evaluations. The authors used an experimental design and tested the model with an ANCOVA. Study 2 examines the impact of attractiveness in the context of multiple reviews and tests attractiveness heuristic as the underlying mechanism.

The findings indicate that when an attractive (vs less-attractive) reviewer writes a positive review, brand evaluations are enhanced. However, such an effect does not occur with a negative review. With multiple reviews varying in valence, cognitive load activates the use of an attractiveness heuristic when a positive review is written by an attractive (vs less-attractive) reviewer, thus leading to enhanced brand evaluations.

These findings highlight the presence of the attractiveness halo effect in online reviews and offer important implications to social media marketers. While previous studies have largely focused on review characteristics (e.g. star ratings, strength of the argument, etc.), this study focuses on reviewer characteristics (i.e. attractiveness) and cognitive biases associated with online brand evaluations.

This study aims to investigate the promoting effects of the quantity and quality of online review user-generated photos (UGPs) on perceived review usefulness. The research further tests the hindering effect of human facial presence in review photos on review usefulness.

Based on review samples of restaurants in a tourist destination Las Vegas, this study used an integrated method combining a machine learning algorithm and econometric modeling.

Results indicate that the number of UGPs depicting a restaurant’s food, drink, menu and physical environment has positive impacts on perceived review usefulness. The quality of online review UGPs can also enhance perceived review usefulness, whereas facial presence in these UGPs hinders perceived review usefulness.

Findings suggest that practitioners can implement certain tactics to potentially improve consumers’ willingness to share more UGPs and UGPs with higher quality. Review websites could develop image-processing algorithms for identifying and presenting UGPs containing core attributes in prominent positions on the site.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to present a comprehensive analytical framework investigating the enhancing or hindering roles of review photo quantity, photo quality and facial presence in online review UGPs on review usefulness. Using the heuristic-systematic model as a theoretical foundation, this study verifies the additivity effect and attenuation effect of UGPs’ visual elements on judgements of online review usefulness. Furthermore, it extends scalable image data analysis by adopting a deep transfer learning algorithm in hospitality and tourism.

This study clarifies the integration-related effects of photos and text on consumer information processing and decision-making outcomes.

The authors conducted an experiment by recruiting 162 workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk. These participants were randomly assigned based on a full factorial, between-subject design with four possible conditions (2 [separate vs alternate layout] × 2 [photo-first vs text-first sequence]). The authors conducted a two-way analysis of variance to test the main effects and the interaction effects of layout and sequence on perceived diagnosticity, pleasantness feelings and attitudes toward products or services reviewed through electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM); the authors also applied Process Models 4 and 8 to explore the mechanism of these effects.

The experimental results reveal that text-first sequence is generally more effective than photo-first sequence in enhancing perceived diagnosticity and attitudes toward products or services. However, when a photo is displayed first, a separate layout is more effective than an alternate layout in enhancing perceived diagnosticity and attitudes. By contrast, regardless of the sequence, an alternate layout is more effective than a separate layout in inducing pleasantness feeling.

Future studies should further explore photo-based e-WOM, including other photo characteristics (e.g. visual quality, quantity and content).

This study provides guidelines for businesses to use photos on social media to achieve strategic goals.

This study addresses an identified need; that is, how the presentation of photo cues (e.g. layout and sequence) influences consumer decisions.

This article aims to advance a new theoretical perspective on the basis of prosumption theory, namely, that online review platforms can be conceptualized as prosumer communities (and online reviews as prosumer-generated content). This perspective meshes with message tuning research to suggest specific mechanisms through which peer-to-peer prosumption takes place in online review communities. Overall, this article enriches and deepens theoretical understanding of prosumption behavior in the product review context and offers practical advice for inducing high-value, prosumer-generated content in online communities.

Exploratory observations of current practices across a wide spectrum of review platforms were conducted. The observed platforms include independent review sites (e.g. Yelp) and review sites affiliated with e-tailers (e.g. Amazon), general review sites (e.g. Viewpoints) and product-specific review sites (e.g. Healthgrades), large-scale review sites (e.g. TripAdvisor) and review sites of a smaller scale (e.g. Judy’s Book) and review sites based in different geographic regions, including Australia (e.g. Productreview.com.au), China (e.g. Taobao), Europe (e.g. Reevoo), India (e.g. Zomato) and North America (e.g. Foursquare).

Theoretical analysis suggests that high-quality review content is the result of collaborative prosumption characterized by three distinct value-adding processes: history-based message tuning, audience-based message tuning and norm-based message tuning. In-depth observations reveal that today’s review platforms are leveraging these value-adding processes to varying degrees. The overwhelming diversity of the observed platform features points to the need for more research on platform design and management.

This research identifies three distinct dimensions of review quality – novelty, relevancy and congruency – that can be systematically managed through platform design. The exploratory nature of this research necessitates follow-up work to further investigate how high-quality review content emerges in the historical, interpersonal and cultural contexts of online prosumer communities.

The prosumption-inducing mechanisms identified in this research have major consumer welfare and strategy implications. First, they may lead to novel, relevant and congruent consumer reviews. Second, they may enhance the value of brand communities (which rely heavily on collaborative prosumption).

This research addresses two intriguing questions pertinent to marketing theory and practice in the digital era. First, how do high-quality reviews emerge on product review platforms (which consist of ordinary consumers)? Second, what constitutes high-quality review content and how can platform managers facilitate the collaborative creation of high-quality review content by ordinary consumers?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This research aims to provide a theory-based means for firms to improve customers' likelihood to provide reviews and elicit reviews that are more accurate accounts of customers' consumption experience. The authors also examined the moderating impact of type of review (whether the reviews are anonymous or identified) on the effect of moral identity on the likelihood to provide reviews and accuracy of the reviews.

Data were collected via two experiments (n = 524) in lab sessions. The authors used convenient samples comprised of college students and administrative staff. Study 1 was used to examine the impact of participants' naturally existing moral identity on the likelihood to provide reviews and the accuracy of the reviews provided. Study 2 was used to investigate whether moral identity can be artificially activated or not. Study 2 was also used to test the moderating impact of the type of review on the effect of moral identity (activated vs not activated/control) on likelihood to provide reviews and the accuracy of the reviews provided.

The authors found that moral identity positively impacts the likelihood that customers will agree to provide reviews and the accuracy of the reviews. Also, the type of review moderates the effect of moral identity for those whose moral identity was not activated (i.e. uninfluenced). However, the type of review did not moderate the effect of moral identity when participants' moral identity was activated or primed.

Strategies currently used to elicit online reviews yield low conversion rates or elicit reviews that potential customers do not trust. This paper provides an empirically tested, theory-driven means for managers of digital platforms to improve customer engagement behaviors such as “liking”, tweeting, sharing and product reviews.

This research focuses on the role of product acquisition cues in positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) content on social media, comparing the characteristics of different sources of product acquisition (purchased vs. gifted) and exploring whether and how they affect consumers' reliance on word-of-mouth (WOM).

The research model was developed based on the mental imagery theory. Two offline experiments and two online experiments were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that, compared to the purchased source, the gifted source evokes more positive mental imagery and greater emotional attachment to the product, resulting in greater consumer reliance on PWOM. In addition, the effect of the source of product acquisition on reliance on PWOM was stronger for experiential (vs. material) products and for consumers with higher interdependent (vs. independent) self-construal.

This research highlights the role of product acquisition cues in PWOM in influencing consumers' evaluation of WOM, while also revealing the processes inherent in how consumers process information through mental imagery. The findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of the antecedents of reliance on WOM and offer new insights and recommendations for management practitioners.

This study aims to find how can fashion micro-influencers and their electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) messages increase consumer engagement on social media, focusing on micro-influencers’ influence, typology, eWOM content and consumer engagement.

A total of 20,000 microblogs were collected from Irish fashion micro-influencers and analyzed through keyword classification and content analysis in NVivo. The determinants of eWOM persuasiveness for consumer engagement on social media were investigated based on Sussman and Siegal’s information adoption model.

The study finds that among the four types of micro-influencers, market mavens and their eWOM messages have the highest impact on consumer engagement on social media, and it presents a repetitive and persuasive eWOM model of market mavens to increase consumer participation. Also, the study discovers that micro-influencers’ occasion-related microblogs have an increasing impact on consumer interactions whereas microblogs with brands have a decreasing engagement with consumers on social media.

This study advances prior studies on the relationship between influencers’ eWOM messages and consumer participation on social media by the development of a persuasive eWOM model of micro-influencers to increase consumer engagement and fill in the lack of relevant literature. Also, findings provide actionable insights for marketing communication practitioners to persuade consumers to participate in eWOM communications and establish strong consumer-brand relationships on social media.

Consumers are increasingly using review sites to exchange product information, whereas companies attempt to maintain control of brand-related communications. One method marketers may take to retain control is to remove negative opinions about the brand. This paper aims to examine the impact on consumer’s brand perceptions when negative reviews are censored.

Two experimental studies were conducted to assess whether censorship of a negative online review, in the form of removal by the company, weakens brand relationship quality (BRQ) dimensions.

The results show that censoring negative online reviews has a damaging effect on BRQ. Additionally, the findings indicate that a brand may not be able to increase BRQ when a negative review has been posted, however strategic measures can be taken to diminish the potentially harmful impact.

As many brands still do not adequately understand how to handle negative online reviews, this research offers valuable implications in furthering the examination of negative electronic word-of-mouth and ways to diminish its harmful effects. Additionally, while substantial research focuses on the positive consequences of brand relationships, this research answers calls to examine the negative impacts to BRQ.