An Examination of the Joint Impacts of Review Content and Reviewer Characteristics on Review Usefulness—the Case of Yelp.com

We examine the interaction effects of review content (certainty) and reviewer characteristics (popularity and expertise) on consumer judgment of review usefulness. Utilizing an extended Poisson regression model, we empirically tested the joint impacts based on 5426 reviews from Yelp.com about 968 restaurants. Our results indicate that (1) reviewer popularity negatively interacts with certainty to affect review usefulness and (2) in contrast, reviewer expertise positively interacts with certainty to affect review usefulness. These findings add new insights into online review research and offer practical implications for online review platforms

Cross-Cultural Examination on Content Bias and Helpfulness of Online Reviews: Sentiment Balance at the Aspect Level for a Subjective Good

Online reviews can be fraught with biases, especially on experience goods. Using multilingual sentiment analysis software, we examined the characteristics of review biases and helpfulness at the aspect level across two different cultures. First, we found the lopsidedness of emotions expressed over the four key aspects of Japanese restaurant reviews between Japanese and Western consumers. Second, helpful reviews have sentiments expressed more evenly over those aspects than average for both Japanese and Western consumers. Third, however, there are significant differences over how sentiments are spread over aspects between them. Westerners found reviews helpful when reviews focused less on food and more on service. In addition, Japanese customers were more concerned with savings whereas Westerners paid attention to whether they are getting their money’s worth. These findings point to future research opportunities for leveraging sentiment analysis over key aspects of goods, particularly those of experience/subjective goods, across different cultures and customer profile categories

Essays on the Influence of Review and Reviewer Attributes on Online Review Helpfulness: Attribution Theory Perspective

With the emergence of digital technology and the increasing availability of information on the internet, customers rely heavily on online reviews to inform their purchasing decisions. However, not all online reviews are helpful, and the factors that contribute to their helpfulness are complex and multifaceted. This dissertation addresses this gap in the literature by examining the antecedents that determine online review helpfulness using attribution theory. The dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay examines the impact of authenticity (review attribute) on review helpfulness, showing that the expressive authenticity of a review enhances its helpfulness. The second essay investigates the relationship between the reviewer attributes i.e., motivation, activity, and goals in online reviews. The study employs various machine learning techniques to investigate the influence of these factors on reviewers\u27 goal attainment. The third essay explores how the reviewer attributes are related to the helpfulness of online reviews. The dissertation offers significant theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the dissertation provides new insights into novel review and reviewer attributes. The study proposes a taxonomy of online reviews using means-ends fusion theory offering a framework for understanding the relationships between different components of online reviewer attributes and their contribution to the attainment of specific goals, such as emotional satisfaction. The study also highlights the importance of understanding the motivations and activities of online reviewers in predicting emotional satisfaction and the conditional effects of complaining behavior on emotional satisfaction. The findings inform review platform owners, business owners, reviewers, and prospective consumers in decision-making through helpful reviews. To review platform owners, the findings help segregate helpful reviews from the humongous number of reviews by determining the authenticity of the review. To business owners, the findings can help in understanding consumer behavior and taking necessary actions to provide better service to their customers. To reviewers, this dissertation can act as a guideline to write helpful reviews and to determine their helpfulness. Finally, to consumers or review readers, this dissertation provides an understanding of helpful reviews, thus allowing them to take product or service purchase decisions

Measuring Product Type With Dynamics of Online Product Review Variance

The concept of “product type” (experience versus search product) is increasingly important in business research and practice. However, it is not defined or measured precisely in the Internet age due to significantly lower search cost and changes in consumer information search behavior resulting from reliance on information and communications technology. We take advantage of the greatly available micro level online word-of-mouth data and infer product type based on statistical properties of online word of mouth (specifically, online product reviews). We draw on the theories from statistics and literature on informational content of online product reviews to analytically propose a mechanism to classify products. We further collect archival data to categorize the products and services. Implications of this analytical tool and empirical findings for research, theory and managerial practice are discussed

How Reviewers’ Identity Disclosure and Expertise Affect Consumer Responses: The Mediating Role of Perceived Deception

Deceptive reviews which include posts by businesses (or individuals) to promote their own products/services or denounce their competitors are increasingly being used to mislead those making purchase decisions. Mass media globally and online review websites have acknowledged the existence of deceptive reviews that can undermine trust in online review websites. However, the challenges faced by both online review websites and businesses whose products and services are being reviewed extend beyond the existence of actual deceptive reviews. Another significant problem is related the issue of perceived deception (what consumers perceive is a deceptive review regardless of whether the review is deceptive or not), which is the focus of this thesis. A systematic review of literature regarding online reviews suggests that consumers’ perceived credibility and trustworthiness can be influenced by various factors related to reviews, reviewers, online review websites, and consumers’ characteristics, either independently or interactively. In turn, perceived credibility and trustworthiness play a role in influencing consumers’ responses. However, there is a lack of academic knowledge regarding the antecedents and consequences of perceived deception in online reviews that this thesis seeks to address. Building on two well-known theories (social information processing theory (SIPT) and the persuasion knowledge model (PKM)) and supplementing them with existing online review literature, a conceptual framework is developed and tested. The framework assesses how reviewers’ profile cues (reviewer’s identity disclosure and reviewer’s expertise), influence perceived deception. In addition, consumers’ responses to online reviews that they perceive to be deceptive, such as reduced booking intention, negative emotion, warning other consumers by sharing negative word of mouth (NWOM), or experiencing reduced trust towards a hotel are explored. The role of online review scepticism on the relationship between reviewers’ profile cues and perceived deception is also investigated. An online experiment (pre-test 1: n = 93; pre-test 2: n = 82; main study: n = 321) using a 2 (reviewer’s identity disclosure: high, low) x 2 (reviewer’s expertise: high, low) between-subject design was used to explore how a reviewer’s profile cues influence perceived deception and ultimately consumer responses. The results reveal the significant effects that reviewer’s identity disclosure and expertise have on perceived deception, particularly when online review scepticism is high. These cues also influence booking intention, NWOM, and negative emotion through perceived deception. Drawing on SIPT and PKM, the thesis extends online review literature by developing and testing a conceptual framework which shows how reviewers’ profile cues (i.e., low identity disclosure and low expertise) impact perceived deception and, in turn, subsequent consumer responses. The conceptual framework also shows the moderation effect of online review scepticism on the relationship between reviewer’s profile cues and perceived deception. Practically, this thesis validates a model that identifies the causes and negative effects of perceived deception. The model is designed to assist online review websites and hotels understand the importance of ensuring that genuine reviews (non-deceptive reviews) are not mistakenly perceived to be deceptive. Online review websites and hotels might achieve this by foregrounding reviewer's profile information (i.e., reviewer's identity disclosure and reviewer's expertise level)

Managing Customers and Motivating Employees for Success in the Frontlines

This dissertation is comprised of three papers in the field of frontline marketing, which examines the influence of servicescape, frontline employee (FLE), and service encounter expectations on customer and company outcomes. The first chapter examines the influence of the servicescape on customers’ tipping behaviors. Through the field and lab experiments, I find that customers’ status perception is a key mechanism that drives their tipping behaviors, and, more importantly, that subtle elements of the servicescape imbued with status perception (i.e., the color of service props) increases tip sizes in restaurants. In the second chapter, I investigate boundary conditions for an important work motivator for FLE, organizational identification (OI). Using meta-analytic techniques, I find that OI, which is defined as individual’s sense of oneness with the organization, improves FLE’s in-role performance the most when the work itself is not meaningful. This finding implies that OI is most beneficial when the work itself provides workers with limited opportunity to experience a sense of autonomy (e.g., tellers), competence (e.g., food service workers), or relatedness (e.g., delivery personnel). Finally, in the third chapter, I examine the impact of psychological distances evoked by customers’ story on service encounter evaluation. Drawing construal level theory, I developed predictions that psychologically distant story enhances prospective customers’ narrative transportation, which in turn increases positive service encounter evaluations. I also hypothesize that this distal story effects are strengthened when those who have high need for cognition evaluate intangible service encounter, because their dispositional characteristics that enjoy thinking. The findings across four studies based on unobtrusive field study and series of experiment consistently support my hypothesis. This study contributes to the service marketing literature by revealing how storytellers’ distal stories can positively influence customers’ future service encounter evaluation

Marketing Management of Online Negative Reviews of Medical Services

Various internet platforms contain the ability to share information about medical services. These internet platforms include patient review websites, online forums, and social media websites. Some of the information that customers share are reviews of their negative medical experience. Much of the related research includes exploring the problem of online negative reviews of medical services from a medical professional perspective on how to manage the situation with the patient. This research project includes exploring the role of marketing professionals and the situation of customers producing online negative reviews of medical services. The general problem addressed is the detrimental impact of online negative customer reviews resulting in a deterioration of the organization’s brand reputation. The specific problem addressed was the potential detrimental impact of online negative customer reviews within the medical services industry, in the Midwestern United States, resulting in the deterioration of the organization\u27s brand reputation. The research questions included a focus on the customer. The three research questions related to the customer’s motivation, the type of communication, and the type of resolution the customer wants. The method for collecting data was semi-structured interviews. The results found seven themes. Additionally, key results found that most participants want some form of communication and resolution with an individual at the medical institution. Repairing the relationship between the customer, who is a patient, and individuals who work at the medical institution is a step that will help to reduce the detrimental impact of negative reviews on the medical brand reputation

Essays in platform economics

In this thesis we present three papers which investigate informative content generated by consumers, aiming to improve the usefulness for matching high quality products at lower prices. Following a general perspective, we explore platform product listing, searchable through a decision making mechanism. In a more specialized perspective, we take into account a dropping price modality service, differentiating the consumer benefit in the case of high or low quality product matching. Chapter 1 Product quality on platform markets. Abstract Many studies have questioned the meaning of \u201cproduct quality\u201d, hanging between a characteristic interpretation of a product for improving consumer satisfaction, and scientific approach to measure its benefits. Starting from the historical quality setting as mirror image of the price, we investigate the adoption of new signals, developed over the years to adjust the original relationship. Recently, bootstrapping by emperor of e-commerce platforms, the rating system has emerged as a reference contribute for product quality informativeness. We study this tendency, to show its failure in the presence of low price market and new brands. For this purpose, we collect User Generated Contents from a well-known online retailing platform. We capture and distill meaningful features in order to adjust the rating assigned by reviewers, and propose a novel quality formula able to increase the accuracy of the information provided to the consumer. We suggest that our formula better captures product quality, and, when adopted by a platform for sorting the products, it increases the products variety and, consequently the satisfaction of the consumer. Our proposal suggests a way to facilitate the consumer search (as we will show in the second chapter). Moreover, it can be used as a measure of market efficiency in the case of voluntary opacity of the platform in exposing product quality signals.Chapter 2 Optimizing Product Quality in Online Search Abstract Exploiting an original definition of product quality, based on the information we can get from the User Generated Content, and driven by a statistical learning algorithm, we propose a new ordering mechanism for product search on platforms. This product quality formula is imported in a decision making mechanism which adopts an optimal Stopping Rule, in order to set the optimal time to terminate the search process and choose a good to purchase. We show how the consumer can benefit from the implementation of such a mechanism, demonstrating an improvement in terms of consumer utility at different levels of price, with respect to other sorting traditionally adopted by platforms. We propose a utility function fitted to a Gumbel distribution, and we demonstrate a stochastic dominance of our model. Experimental evidences on the camera market category put in relevance the efficiency of our quality index for ranking the effective quality compared to the more traditional rating system. This is particularly true for the low-price accessory market segment of products, in which we show higher utility dominance and slightly higher elasticity of demand.Chapter 3 Price Matching and Platform Pricing Abstract In this study we investigate the effects of Price Matching Guarantees (PMG) commercial policies on U.S. online consumer electronics daily prices. By applying a Diff-in-Diff identification strategy we find evidence in favor of price reductions occurring after the PMG policy is repealed. We further investigate if such effect is heterogeneous according to products characteristics, by exploiting User Generated Contents (products popularity and quality) and online search visibility measures (Google Search Rank). Estimates suggest that for high quality (visibility) products PMG policies harms competition by keeping prices high, while for low quality (visibility) products, prices decrease during the policy validity period

Engaging your customers via responding to online product reviews

Given the tremendous impact of online reviews on consumer choice, responding to online word of mouth (WOM) has become an important channel for firms to engage the consumers. This thesis investigates how firms can proactively respond to online product reviews to engage customers and manage customer relationships. In Study One, based upon the data of hotel reviews on Tripadvisor.com, I propose that responding by firms differ in three aspects, namely frequency, speed, and the amount of information, and these metrics exert significant influence on subsequent consumes’ WOM engagement, hotel rankings, and votes of usefulness of the reviews. Moreover, in contrast to responding to positive reviews, responding to negative reviews greatly affects consumption decisions given the negativity bias among consumers. Thus, the subsequent two studies examine whether responding help to alleviate the detrimental impact of negative reviews. Drawing from the literature on crisis management, service failure recovery, Study Two posits that sellers’ responses to negative WOM can be categorized as defensive and accommodative. Further, whether accommodative or defensive responding is more effective depends upon the nature of NWOM, namely regular NWOM or product failure. Based on the results of a between-subject experiment, Study Two provides evidence for the asymmetric impact of accommodative versus defensive responding. When confronting regular NWOM, defensive response outperforms accommodative response or no response, whereas accommodative response is superior to defensive response or no response when coping with a service failure. Further, based on the attribution of negative reviews, a moderated mediation effect is found. To enhance the external validity and robustness of these findings, Study Three provides econometric evidence that the relative effectiveness of accommodative vs defensive response on subsequent consumers’ evaluation of their consumption experience. Upon analyzing the hotels’ responses on Tripadvisor.com, responding can be a double-edged sword in that it works only when seller takes the appropriate responding strategies. In particular, the higher proportion of accommodative responses (defensive responses) for product failure reviews (regular negative reviews), the higher the subsequent consumers’ satisfaction. However, responding can backfire when the proportion of defensive responses (accommodative responses) for product failure (regular negative reviews) is high. To recapitulate, this thesis identifies whether and how online responding influences consumer experiences on social media. These research findings can help firms formulate effective responding strategies to take advantage of social media’s unique ability to engage customers and improve consumer satisfaction and loyalty