Consumer skepticism about online reviews and their decision-making process: the role of review self-efficacy and regulatory focus
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This paper aims to investigate whether a message from a brand with stronger brand equity generates more trust than a message from a brand with lower brand equity, and thus is more likely to encourage consumers to write online reviews. This paper also explores what happens when consumers become aware that brands are trying to persuade them to write a review.,Through three experimental studies, where participants were randomly assigned to a brand that has either a stronger or weaker brand equity, ...
Purpose – This paper aims to investigate customers’ motives to engage with electronic word of mouth (eWOM), as well as the effect of eWOM on customer behavior, both at the purchase and post-purchase stages.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative approach was adopted, consisting of 30 semi-structured interviews with Thai consumers. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data.Findings – Information validation, product evaluation, purchase and post-purchase validation are key motives for con...
This study aims to investigate if different types of negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) have various negative effects on the attitude of the consumer toward a product (Laptop) and whether this newfound attitude remains unaffected by the subsequent influence of positive eWOM.,A quantitative study in Germany was conducted. In the two-part experimental setting, first, a factorial repeated-measures between-subjects design was used in which the types of negative eWOM have been manipulated. The ...
Are attractive reviewers more persuasive? Examining the role of physical attractiveness in online reviews
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 impa...
Purpose The purpose of this paper was to uncover morality and dynamics of community of incentivized reviewers who primarily review products on Amazon.com. and, as of late, on various social media platforms. This study is important because it uncovers unknown dynamics that shapes consumer morality and drives reviewer’s ethics. Given the fact that consumers heavily rely on reviews, findings of this paper are of great values to practitioners, consumers and policymakers and highlight potential area ...
Reducing skepticism about corporate social responsibility: roles of gender and agentic-communal orientations
Companies are increasingly emphasizing corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, consumers are often skeptical of the sincerity of companies’ CSR claims, particularly when the claim comes directly from the company. This paper aims to demonstrate how to reduce consumer CSR skepticism by examining the role of a company spokesperson’s gender and gender-related characteristics.,Two between-subjects experiments with a combined total of 329 participants examined how consumers’ levels of CSR skep...
Consumer perceptions of information helpfulness and determinants of purchase intention in online consumer reviews of services.
Online consumer reviews offer an unprecedented amount of information for consumers to evaluate services before purchase. We use the dual process theory to investigate consumer perceptions about information helpfulness (IH) in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) contexts. Results highlight that popularity signals, two-sided reviews, and expert sources (but not source trustworthiness) are perceived as helpful by consumers to assess service quality and performance. Although two-sided reviews exercise a...
The dual-process model of similarity in cause-related marketing: How taxonomic versus thematic partnerships reduce skepticism and increase purchase willingness
Abstract The “fit” between brand and cause has received considerable attention in the study of effective cause-related marketing. However, the literature is largely ambivalent in terms of what fit means, as little systematic research has looked into the relationship between cause and brand and its impact on consumers' skepticism, and in turn, on willingness to purchase. By drawing on the dual-process of similarity, four studies provide evidence on the role of thematic vs. taxonomic similarity in...
Mirror, Mirror on the Retail Wall: Self-Focused Attention Promotes Reliance on Feelings in Consumer Decisions
AbstractThe authors propose that consumers’ increased self-focused attention promotes their relative reliance on affective feelings when they make decisions. The authors test this hypothesis in a variety of consumption domains and decision tasks, including real-life, consequential charitable donations. Consistent support from five experiments with more than 1,770 participants shows that (1) valuations of the decision outcome increase when consumers with high (low) self-focus adopt a feeling-base...
Due to the high persuasiveness and broad accessibility of online reviews, companies have become interested in proactively managing this form of customer-to-customer communication. To date, marketers have commonly used monetary incentives to increase recommendation likelihood, thereby providing extrinsic motivation. However, in terms of the perspective of the review reader who is aware of the monetary reward, this incentive form also includes potential negative consequences, such as credibility l...
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