Customer Evaluation Of Online Product Reviews

This dissertation aims to understand how consumers evaluate online product reviews and perceive them as helpful. While a considerable body of research has investigated this topic, leading to many insightful findings, there are some research gaps in these studies. Previous work typically takes the content of the review as the only factor influencing its helpfulness, neglecting the fact that the evaluation of a review as helpful is typically influenced by the consumer him/herself.To address these research gaps, in this study, we consider how consumers with different psychological status understand and perceive reviews differently. We perform two related sub-studies. In study1, we investigate how consumers with different purchase intentions (that is, to buy a search or an experience product) understand reviews differently. Drawing on the product review literature and two theoretical frameworks (the cognitive fit and schema congruent theories), we propose and test the review product congruity proposition. By conducting a series of experiments, we validate this proposition and find that a consumer’s evaluation of reviews as helpful is determined not only by their content, but is also significantly influenced by the type of product being purchased.In study2, from a new perspective, we propose that consumers have different psychological distance from reviews. Drawing on the construal level theory, we conjecture that reviews will be evaluated as more or less helpful depending on the consumer’s psychological distance. The results of our experiments suggest that a match between psychological distance and review content influences customers’ evaluations of helpfulness, and that this effect is mediated by the perceived quality and source credibility of the review.By conducting these studies, we understand that the evaluation of online product reviews as helpful is greatly determined by the consumer’s specific psychological status (e.g., the different product type the consumer tends to buy). Some reviews will be helpful to one consumer but not another. Furthermore, our further analysis and additional study also show that presenting reviews in a different order also influences how a consumer evaluates them. This thesis makes a substantial contribution to both theory and current practice.