Online Reviews: Star Ratings, Position Effects and Purchase Likelihood

How online word‐of‐mouth impacts receivers

“…These positive effects likely arise because longer reviews provide more information, enabling receivers to infer product outcomes, make attributions about causes, and predict their likelihood of satisfaction. However, longer reviews sometimes decrease perceived review helpfulness and sales (Archak et al, ; Vana & Lambrecht, ; Yazdani, Gopinath, & Carson, ). These inconsistent findings suggest there may be diminishing returns of review length—as reviews become longer, they might provide repetitive or irrelevant information (Archak et al, ; Schindler & Bickart, ), which could make it more difficult for receivers to infer product outcomes, make attributions, and predict satisfaction, or could send negative signals about the sender.…”

“…Regardless, reviews with negative star ratings or text can send negative product signals that increase receivers’ subsequent search behavior (Varga & Albuquerque, ) and helpfulness ratings (Cao et al, ), but decrease purchase likelihood (Varga & Albuquerque, ) and brand equity (Bambauer‐Sachse & Mangold, ). However, more direct comparisons of the impact of positive versus negative reviews reveal mixed effects: reviews of each valence have shown stronger effects on helpfulness ratings, purchase intentions, and sales (e.g., Huang et al, ; Mankad, Han, Goh, & Gavirneni, ; Pan & Zhang, ; Park & Lee, ; Scholz & Dorner, ; Sen & Lerman, ; Vana & Lambrecht, ; Yin et al, ). The amount of valenced text also matters: as the proportion of valenced text in a review increases, its relative impact on review helpfulness and sales may decrease, depending on whether the review is positive or negative (Ludwig et al, ; Mankad et al, ; Schindler & Bickart, ).…”

“…When reviews are listed in the order they were posted (most recent first), earlier reviews are less likely to be seen by receivers, and therefore are less likely to be impactful (Otterbacher, ; Vana & Lambrecht, ). Although temporally recent reviews are perceived as more helpful than later reviews (Chen & Lurie, ; Zhou & Guo, ), chronology does not ensure impact.…”

The interaction effect of online review language style and product type on consumers’ purchase intentions

“…Clemons and Hitt (2006) introduced the theories of hyperdifferentiation and resonance marketing, and proved that the market acceptance of products was influenced by the dual effects of dispersion and ordering of online reviews. Besides, many scholars pay attention to digital marketing strategies, asymmetric effects, star ratings, etc (e.g., Pelsmacker et al, 2018;Park and Nicolau, 2015;Vana and Lambrecht, 2018). However, there are few studies on the language style of online reviews (Willemsen et al, 2011;Ludwig et al, 2013).…”