Lecture 9 Consumer reviews Flashcards
benefits of having a lot of review platforms
- democratize the view
- gives voice to diverse set of people
concerns because of a lot of review platforms
- we don’t know whether the reviews are in good faith or not
- bad intentions
who uses reviews?
Half of adults under 50 routinely check online reviews. Mostly young people use reviews and it decreases with age, but still quite a bit of 65+ people use them.
low trustworthiness on accuracy. 50/50 split between American adults. The ones that often read reviews are more positive about them.
important if your platform uses reviews.
who writes reviews
people that have a reason to write a review
dilemma game; public goods game
everyone donates money, which then is divided equally. but there are always free riders
same with reviews; the more reviews are written the more useful they are.
why do people write reviews
- help and inform others
- help/harm a business
- be influential
- get reward/status from the platform
platforms perspective
- how do we get people to write more reviews
- how do we get the right type of people to write reviews
Cui, Lui & Guo (2012)
tested how reviews impact sales for new products
took data from amazon of two different type of products; search or experience products.
examined weekly changes in user reviews and sales over 9 month with product sales as dependent variable.
search products
products where individuals can search and learn about the products.
objectivity
experience products
much more subjective, like a video game.
general findings from Cui, Lui & Guo (2012)
- volume of reviews increased sales .37 in general
- % of positive reviews led to higher sales
- % of negative reviews led to lower sales (stronger effect than positive)
Different type of product findings from Cui, Lui & Guo (2012)
- volume of reviews increased sales for both types, but way more for experience
- % of positive reviews increased sales for experience products, but not for search products
- % of negative reviews lowered sales for both types of products.
loss aversion and reviews
people are more sensetive to negative information or experience. negative reviews have bigger impact.
businesses should be more concerned about negative reviews and how to combat them
when do people share their opinion
when they’ve had a negative experience.
people are 2-3 times more likely to write a bad review after a negative experience than the other way.
two perspectives to consider in consumer reviews
- author perspective: how do i write the most convincing review
- online platform: which reviews should i promote. also has an interest in customers seeing thrustworthy reviews
3 trust cues
- emotion
- deviance
- humor
idea behind emotion attribution in reviews
when we observe behavior, we come up with an explanation on why people behave this way.
study by Junyong Kim & Pranjal Gupta
had participants rate reviews that were either emotional or unemotional
- rationality: negative emotion makes person seem less rational
- informative: negative emotion makes them seem less informative
- product negativity: product is seen as more negative when there is no emotion expressed in the reviews
effect of emotion
- negative emotions undermine reviewer credibility
- this is the case for anger (unsure if it would be the same for other negative emotions)
- no effect on positive reviews
idea behind deviance in reviews
deviant reviews are more effortful, which makes them seem more thoughtful and accurate
study by Kupor and Tormala on deviance
manipulated the default and the deviant review participants had to rate.
- when default is moderate the extreme reviews are percieved as more thoughtful, accurate and with good intentions
- this effect flips depending in the default
implications of findings on deviance
- reviews that stand out are seen as more accurate and informative
- what it means to stand out depends on context and the default
idea behind humor in reviews
when using humor people can look relateable and be taken more seriously.
something is funny when it violates our expectation but is not actually harmful or threatening
McGraw et al., (2015) motives/goals for complaining
- helping/warning
- entertain
- impression management
- redress (set things right
- sympathy
depending on goal it might be more or less likely and useful to use humor.
when do people use humor
in their paper McGraw et al., argue that humor takes place with some violation of our expectation. negative reviews violate our expectations more.
how are humorous complaints recieved
- got more likes on facebook
- were rated as funnier
- people were less likely to be seen as negative
- participants were more likely to accept a friend request.
but
- humurous complaints were seen as less of a priority/taken less serious
goals in combination with humor
humor gives you a social advantage;
- helpful (warning), entertain, impression management are positively correlated
- negative correlation for redress and sympathy
conclusion on humor
humor can be a useful tool, but it’s usefulness depends on the goal. it helps maintain positive image, but reduces the seriousness of complaint.
two perspectives on trusting reviews
- wisdom of crowd
- costly signal theory
wisdom of crowd
individually we can make mistakes but together they cancel out.
costly signal theory
signal can only be honest if difficult to fake. trust reviews only if there is proof of buying and that the reviewer is not part of the company or a bot.
amazon study on user rating and consumer reports
wanted to see if consumer ratings correlated with objective measure of product quality.
there were correlations everywhere ranging from -1 to 1, which is not good.
-> user reviews are somewhat a predictor of consumer reports’ reviews, but price is a better indicator for the quality.
Luca & Zervas (2016)
looked ad yelp filters for reviews. 16% was filtered as suspicious
- fake positive reviews are more likely than fake negative reviews
also looked at author characteristics
- less reviews written
- less friends
- less likely to have a profile picture
