Are Relational Reviews More Persuasive Than Expert Reviews?

The rapid development of Internet and e-commerce has made online reviews which based on products or services an important reference of customers before making decisions.Due to the anonymity,large quantity,and wide range of spreading of online reviews,it brings consumer cognitive difficulties and trust risks to decision-making.In order to increase the credibility of online reviews,companies aggregate opinions from experts in marketing practices to gain consumer trust and acceptance.With the prosperity and evolution of social networking platform,some sites and app which have online reviewing function have gradually embedded social relationship chains into online reviews and show them preferentially.Online reviews derived from intimate social relationships appear on the Internet.Although there are many studies exploring the impact of online reviews on consumer product attitudes,many scholars only focus on common user reviews and expert reviews.With the emergence of relational reviews,online reviews have new sources and new communication channels.It is necessary to systematically classify online reviews,and to study and compare the influence of various types of online reviews on consumer product attitudes and the conditions that affect their performance.According to the evolution of online reviews,this article will divide online reviews into three types based on information sources:common reviews,expert reviews and relational reviews.Through comparative analysis,this article explored the influence of three types of online reviews on consumer attitudes.According to information communication theory and ELM theory,the valence of information,the need for cognition of the information recipients,and the product involvement can also affect the effectiveness of information persuasion.Therefore,this article will also explore the role of the three different types of online reviews in the influence of consumer product attitudes.Using the ANOVA analysis method and 3*2*2*2 between-subjects design to explore the effect of different sources on product attitude and the moderating role of need for cognition and product involvement.The empirical results reveal that(1)there is no significant difference in the persuasive effect of expert reviews and relational reviews.(2)The second-order interaction between the review valence and source of the review is not significant.(3)need for cognition and product involvement moderate the persuasion effect of the review source,respectively.(4)the fourth-order interaction effect of the source,valence,need for cognition and product involvement is significant.Finally getting the information preference matrix based on the consumer characteristics,which provides enterprises with effective online-review management strategy.