This paper is the first study that investigates the impact of balance (the ratio of positive and negative reviews) and sequence (the order in which the reviews are presented) of a set of online reviews on the perceived usefulness of these reviews (objective 1). As a second objective, our study attempts to provide more understanding in the gatekeeping role of the perceived usefulness. The results do not only evidence that review balance matters, but also reveal that review sequence has an important effect on the perceived usefulness of a set of reviews. The crucial role of perceived usefulness is demonstrated in that only when reviews are perceived as relatively useful, recall of positive and negative review information affects attitude and intention formation through the impression it creates about the object.

Based on a meta-analysis, this study aims to clarify the influence of online review valence (i.e., whether reviews in a review set are predominantly positive or negative) on various dependent variables, in particular on perceived usefulness of the reviews and on attitudes toward the product. The findings suggest that review valence affects perceived usefulness in a different way than it affects attitudes. We find an optimum impact level for perceived usefulness and a ceiling effect for attitudes. Primarily negative review sets that include few positive reviews show the strongest effect on perceived usefulness, while positive review sets that include few or no negative reviews are most successful in influencing attitudes. Additionally, review valence has a stronger influence on perceived usefulness when the reviews refer to experience (rather than search) products, and it has a stronger influence on attitudes for unfamiliar (rather than familiar) brands. Finally, the strongest influence of review valence refers to recommendation intentions. These findings provide several implications for researchers and practitioners.

We study the impact of perceived personalization on consumer responses to advertising on Facebook, a popular social network site. Based on two experiments, we test a moderated mediation model with perceived relevance as the mediator and respondents' attitude toward Facebook as the moderator of the relationship between perceived personalization on the one hand and brand attitude and click intention on the other hand. The results show that perceived personalization improves responses toward Facebook ads, through perceived relevance. The moderating impact of the attitude toward Facebook is only significant in the second study. There, the positive effect of perceived personalization of Facebook advertisements on click intention is stronger for participants with a more positive attitude toward Facebook.

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