Du Plessis, C. (Christilene)

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ROTTERDAM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, ERASMUS UNIVERSITY The influence of power on prosocial behaviourChris Murray talks with Marius van Dijke Is it better to look  inside or outside for  innovation?By Justin Jansen and Vareska van de Vrande Why trust in the work-place matters and how  to cultivate itBy Stefano Tasselli and Martin Kilduff    How independent  research can improve  investment decisionsBy Egemen Genc and Marno Verbeek The benefits of  combining drones and trucks for deliveriesBy Niels Agatz  Online product  reviews and whether to believe themBy Christilene du Plessis 1st Quarter 2018Management Knowledge         RSM DISCOVERYwww.rsm.nl/discovery RSM - a force for positive changetheir praise. In an attempt to counter this underlying distrust by readers, firms therefore “go transparent” by flagging clearly when reviewers have contributed as part of an incentive programme (think Amazon Vine, for example, where it is explicitly mentioned at the beginning of any consumer feedback provided in the context of the scheme). Whilst this honesty-first policy may work in some cases, there also exists a major element of risk – The consumer psycheResearch into the social influences that make the consumer mind tick dates back to the 19th century and was gen-erated primarily due to an interest in advertising and its impact on people. Until recently, investigation of this very modern-day phenomenon has so far concentrated just on individual rela-tionships, for example the dynamic between a seller and the consumer who writes a review or between the review and the reader. However, it is time that the two relationships were viewed in combination, not least due to the climate in which reviews are now solicited, published, read and critiqued. Firms have growing recourse to incentive schemes in order to encourage consumers to contribute to product promotion, with payment coming in the form of coupons, rebates, free samples, and monetary payments, among other methods. This can have a knock-on effect on the degree of confidence with which reviewers write. In addition, review readers are increasingly web-savvy, making them more likely to take a critical distance and question why certain reviewers are so effusive in In a consumer world where the inter-net is both the root of and the solu-tion to the problem, finding accurate and reliable information before mak-ing a decision to purchase a product or service has never been more chal-lenging. Whilst the web offers adver-tisers a plethora of sales opportunities and consumers unrivalled knowledge of the best buys on the market, us-ing the web intelligently and believing what one reads is another matter. Consumers are less easily fooled by the hard sell as pushed by firms them-selves and more open to the objective experience and opinion of their fel-low buyers. In response to this, sell-ers are giving increased space and visibility to customer feedback. The US-based Yelp platform is just one example, based upon the 26,000 re-views currently published per minute on the site. The danger is that there is no 100 per cent guarantee of product or service providers being showered with praise. How, then, can a firm en-tice glowing reviews without seeming to pressurise customers into publish-ing comments that readers will quickly see through?Online product reviews and whether to believe them By Christilene du Plessis20   |   1st Quarter 2018Management KnowledgeRSM DISCOVERYWeb-based user-generated content represents a potential goldmine for marketers trying to sell their products to the largest possible number of potential buyers. Getting previous consumers to give their products the online thumbs-up may seem like a guaranteed winner, but such a promotional strategy comes at a cost – a monetary cost and also the risk that paying consumers to deliver positive reviews may backfire on the grounds of credibility.1st Quarter 2018   |   21www.rsm.nl/discovery themselves), incentive programmes have been set up in the hope that by ploughing budget into obtaining good reviews, sales will be boosted for a size-able ROI. Amazon.com is just one ex-ample of this rising trend, with the percentage of its incentivised reviews growing from two per cent of all re-views to 50 per cent over the period 2012-2016. In order to get value for the mon-ey they will invest in such incentive schemes it is essential that marketers understand the factors that will im-pact the response of review readers. Generally speaking it is neither abso-lute positivity or exhaustive length and detail that will be trusted by readers. A sense of balance is key, as well as the legitimacy of the writer’s opinion as perceived by the reader. These fac-tors are key in lowering the chances of a reader backlash to a review deemed either overly biased or simply uncon-vincing and uncertain. A recent multi-part research project has sought to un-derstand the full chain of events, from the conditions in which the reviewer is writing through to the final reaction of the reader in order to ascertain if some firms are indeed spending money for nothing.Cost of uncertaintyThe first stage of the study focuses on the uncertainty caused within some the risk of a review reader backlash that will result in feedback not being taken seriously.  Money for nothing?According to recent statistics, as many as 88 per cent of consumers rely upon product reviews when considering the wisdom (or otherwise) of a purchase. Faced with this growing demand for sales content generated by consum-ers (rather than the selling by firms “…as many as 88 per cent of consumers rely upon product reviews when considering the wisdom (or otherwise) of a purchase.”Management KnowledgeRSM DISCOVERYproduct reviews. This invariably takes the form of auxiliary information about the reviewer and/or the means by which their review was produced. Such a transparency policy would ap-pear risky but what the research pro-ject aimed to establish was the im-pact of the critical reader mind on the credibility of the incentivised review where clear indication is made that the writer was rewarded. Based upon data collected from Amazon.com cov-ering 300 reviews of 10 products dur-ing the period April-May 2014 which were subsequently assessed by 5000+ Amazon Mechanical Turk participants, the study drew a fine but clear line be-tween incidental and integral uncer-tainty, based in part on the degree of incentive disclosure. An important distinctionThe study concluded that readers with doubts as to the ulterior motives be-hind a review question the relevance of their doubt for judging the re-viewed product. In short, in contrast to the common belief that uncertain-ty regarding the trustworthiness of a reviewer will always decrease persua-sion, the role of uncertainty in deci-sion-making proves more nuanced and depends on whether uncertainty is review writers, based upon the degree of financial compensation received and the resultant effect on the reviews produced and the reception from readers. Real-life testing and reviewing of three products (a pair of headphones, an online video game, and a brand of yogurt) with differing levels of payment and involving a participant population of 600 Dutch university students and 300 US online panel participants, examined how the writers considered the legitimacy of their own opinion in relation to the reward they received. Participants were informed in advance how much they would be paid, as is the case in real-life review scenarios. A clear tendency for lower-paid reviewers to question the legitimacy of their own opinion and write more uncertain reviews was observed. This was then backed up by an additional step in the research, where readers then assessed the reviews in order to establish the knock-on effect that this uncertainty produces from the reader perspective. The critical readerThe second dimension to the study in-troduced the notion of incentive dis-closure, an increasingly prevalent re-ality in the world of online customer deemed integral or incidental to judg-ment formation. Using a field study and two experiments, the research shows that disclosure-induced uncer-tainty about reviewer trustworthiness deemed integral to judgment forma-tion, leads to lower product evalua-tions based on the incentivised review. However, when uncertainty is judged incidental to judgment formation, product evaluations are unaffected by incentive disclosure.Paying consumers to provide posi-tive product or service feedback re-quires the perfect balance – incenti-vising to an extent that writers feel confident enough in themselves to pro-duce reviews that inspire confidence in readers without coming across as paid lip service that should not be trusted. In a web-based world where users and consumers are arguably the most valued advertising mouth-pieces, it is more important than ever to not overstep the line between gain-ing good press and buying unconvinc-ingly good publicity. This article draws its inspiration from the PhD thesis Influencers: The Role of Social Influence in Marketing, written by Christilene du Plessis and published as part of the ERIM PhD Series Research in Management. It can be freely downloaded at   WEB  https://repub.eur.nl/pub/103265Christilene du Plessis is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Lee Kong Chian School of Business.  EMAIL  cduplessis@smu.edu.sg “Paying consumers to provide positive product or service feedback requires the perfect balance…”Online product reviews and whether to believe them (continued)By Christilene du Plessis22   |   1st Quarter 2018

Online product reviews and whether to believe them

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