Trust antecedents in online reviews across national cultures

2023 | Decision Support Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Kim, Youngeui; Srite, Mark; Zhao, Huimin

Abstract: When reading an online review, consumers rely on implied trust-building factors ... Expand

Abstract: When reading an online review, consumers rely on implied trust-building factors within it. Trust antecedents have been extensively researched and categorized into argument quality and source credibility. However, there is still a need to investigate how their help for consumers differs across national cultures. Furthermore, while a profile photo has been found to enhance the helpfulness of a review by improving source credibility, little is known about how consumers perceive user appearance in a review picture and no research has compared these two types of visual information. To bridge these gaps, we examine how trust antecedents and visual information help consumers’ decision making differently across national cultures, using reviews collected from Amazon in the US and Germany, respectively. Our results show that information quality is more helpful for consumers in an individualistic and low uncertainty avoidance culture, whereas source credibility is more valued in the opposite culture. Interestingly, the effects of the two types of visual information, user appearance in a profile photo versus in a review picture, also differ across cultures. This research contributes to the online review literature by introducing visual information and national culture with new perspectives of trust. Our findings suggest that multinational e-commerce businesses adopt culture-specific strategies in review systems to better help consumers make informed purchase decisions. Collapse

Topics: national culture online review Vine data quality information retrieval

Methods: robustness check topic model term frequency–inverse document frequency propensity score method natural language processing

Text Performance on the Vine Stage? The Effect of Incentive on Product Review Text Quality

2023 | Information Systems Research | Citations: 0

Authors: Qiao, Dandan; Rui, Huaxia

Abstract: Incentivized reviews have become increasingly prevalent on product review sites ... Expand

Abstract: Incentivized reviews have become increasingly prevalent on product review sites such as Amazon. Whereas outright fake reviews are clearly unacceptable and should be removed from review platforms, reviews by incentivized consumers with otherwise authentic product experiences fall into a gray area. On the one hand, many critics and researchers have warned of their harm by pointing out their biased ratings. On the other hand, these reviews might complement organic reviews with review text of higher quality. The current paper studies whether incentivized reviews on Amazon are more coherent and offer richer detail. We use Amazon’s platform-incentivized reviews, known as Vine reviews, for our primary sample and use seller-incentivized reviews for checking robustness. Estimations from a two-way fixed-effect model consistently show that incentivized reviews do compensate for their reduced impartiality through better text quality, measured by discourse coherence and level of relevant detail. This finding is further supported by a randomized experiment using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Hence, current literature findings on the poor quality of text of incentivized reviews, based on review length and lexical complexity, portray only an incomplete picture of incentivized reviews. Given that numerical ratings for products via incentivized reviews are likely biased whereas their text content is of high quality, a natural way to embrace incentivized reviews is to keep their text content, suppress their numerical ratings, and always highlight the label of “incentivized reviews.”History: Juan Feng, Senior Editor; Jianqing Chen, Associate Editor.Funding: This work was supported by Singapore Ministry of Education Tier 1 Research Grant [Grant A-0008174-00-00].Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.1146. Collapse

Topics: Vine experience good online review DVD video game

Methods: experiment qualitativ observational study product review experimental group robustness check

Review credibility as a safeguard against fakery: the case of Amazon

2022 | European Journal of Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Jabr, Wael

Abstract: Online reviews remain a reliable source for customers when making purchase decis ... Expand

Abstract: Online reviews remain a reliable source for customers when making purchase decisions. Yet, the pervasiveness of fake reviews jeopardises this reliability and questions the quality of this content. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence from a major online retailer that mitigation against fakery can be successful. To that end, we proposed, tested, and validated an approach, based on existing safeguards, to quantify the credibility of reviews and thus reliably reduce product uncertainty. We also showed that reviews with sufficient credibility signals were effective at influencing product sales, and this influence was prevalent for both niche and new products on the market. As such, this study offers a novel approach to mitigate the impact of fakery in reviews posted to online infomediaries. Our work focuses primarily on Amazon as a major retailer but also provides further support by drawing on Yelp, another major review platform. Collapse

Topics: online review electronic market fake review user-generated content Vine

Methods: computational algorithm robustness check autocorrelation analysis longitudinal research product review

Theories: information theory

Trust Effect on Online Reviews Across National Culture

2021 | Americas Conference on Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Kim, Youngeui; Srite, Mark

Abstract: Trustworthiness can make a review helpful for customers. As trust formation is ... Expand

Abstract: Trustworthiness can make a review helpful for customers. As trust formation is influenced by national culture, generalization of the trust effect may not always work for another culture. However, the trust effect on review helpfulness has been studied mainly in one country, the US. To fill in this gap, we examine how review contents and reviewer information can have different impacts on review evaluation of customers by national culture in two countries⎯US and Germany. As a result, trust antecedents are overall important in elevating review quality, but the review contents are more valued in an individualistic culture (US) while reviewer information is more important in culture scoring high in uncertainty avoidance (Germany). Interestingly, we also found that visual information, a picture, has a different role depending on the culture. These results can offer business implications so that multinational e-commerce companies need to have culture-specific strategies in review management. Collapse

Topics: national culture electronic commerce online review Vine user-generated content

Methods: regression analysis method statistical hypothesis test descriptive statistic

Is More Better? The Divide between Retailer’s and Manufacturers’ Preferences for Reviews and Review Monetization

2021 | Management Information Systems Quarterly | Citations: 0

Authors: Zhang, Haozhao; Zhang, Zhe (James); Raghunathan, Srinivasan

Abstract: Research on online product reviews has examined a variety of issues ranging fro ... Expand

Abstract: Research on online product reviews has examined a variety of issues ranging from reviewers' motivation to write reviews to the impact of reviews on product sales. Implicit in this research stream is the notion that more reviews are better for sellers and consumers. However, it is unclear whether both retailers, who control the review platform, and manufacturers, whose products are reviewed, prefer more reviews over fewer reviews. Using a game theoretical model of a context in which a dominant retailer sells competing products from two manufacturers to consumers who are uncertain about product quality and fit, we show that the retailers' and manufacturers' preferences regarding the number of reviews are not always aligned. The nature of misalignment depends on whether the quality or the fit is more dominant in terms of consumers' evaluation of products. If generating reviews do not cost anything, we found that additional reviews always benefit the retailer; however, if the number of reviews exceeds a threshold in the quality-dominates-fit case scenario, they may be harmful to the manufacturer. On the other hand, if the retailer incurs a sufficiently high cost to generate reviews, the retailer may prefer to have fewer reviews. We show that retailers can exploit the divide between retailers' and manufacturers' preferences for reviews and monetize reviews by charging a fee to the manufacturers in return for a guarantee on the number of reviews that they generate. We show that the product type and review platform design play a significant role in the attractiveness of review monetization for retailers. Even if reviews are monetized, we determined that retailers' revenue from "selling" reviews to manufacturers does not exceed the cost of generating reviews, implying that the benefit from reviews is driven the positive impacts of reviews on the retailer's core business of selling products to consumers. However, in the fitdominates-quality case scenario, retailers do not prefer large numbers of reviews whereas manufacturers do. In this case, we found that retailers are unable to exploit the misalignment between retailers' and manufacturers' preferences for reviews through review monetization. Collapse

Topics: online review digital platform electronic commerce price management Vine

Methods: mathematical model optimization model

Theories: game theory

The Double-Edged Sword of Expert Reviewer Programs: The Effects of Offering Expert Reviewer Status on Review Generation

2017 | International Conference on Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Pu, Jingchuan; Kwark, Young; Han, Sang Pil; Gu, Bin; Ye, Qiang

Abstract: As online reviews play an increasingly influential role in consumer decisions in ... Expand

Abstract: As online reviews play an increasingly influential role in consumer decisions in ecommerce, large online retailers such as Amazon recently launched expert reviewer programs to supply high-quality reviews by selected experts. While prior studies examined the impact of online reviews written by experts on the product’s sales performance, our study investigates the effects of soliciting users to join expert reviewer programs and offering free products on their review generation processes and outcomes. Contrary to the common wisdom, our results reveal that, after reviewers participate in expert reviewer programs, they generate longer reviews but offer lower ratings for sponsored free products. However, they produce more reviews and higher ratings for non-sponsored regular products. Additional analyses offer theoretical underpinnings for the asymmetric effects of expert reviewer programs. Collapse

Topics: Vine online review online community intrinsic motivation user-generated content

Methods: longitudinal research experimental group difference in differences propensity score method robustness check

Incentive Provision and Pro-Social Behaviors

2017 | HICSS | Citations: 0

Authors: Qiao, Dandan; Lee, Shun-Yang; Whinston, Andrew; Wei, Qiang

Abstract: Individuals’ pro-social behaviors are driven by altruistic and selfish motivatio ... Expand

Abstract: Individuals’ pro-social behaviors are driven by altruistic and selfish motivations. In this paper we explore how the introduction of external incentives would influence one’s pro-social behavior both in the short term and in the long run. Using a large data set on Amazon product reviews, we design a quasiexperimental approach where we combine a propensity score matching (PSM) and a difference-indifferences (DiD) method to empirically study the effect of incentive provision on reviewer’s behavior. We apply techniques from linguistics, language processing, and machine learning to propose several novel measures to capture reviews’ writing style and quality. We find evidences consistent with crowdingout and overjustification effects. Our study contributes to the understanding of pro-social behavior and sheds light on how incentives would shift individual behavior. Collapse

Topics: online review intrinsic motivation user-generated content decision making user behavior

Methods: propensity score method experimental group propensity score matching quasi experiment statistical hypothesis test

Theories: economic theory

Meetings as Persistent Conversations that use ICTs and Face-to-Face to Build Social Capital

2017 | HICSS | Citations: 0

Authors: Stephens, Keri; Cruz, Ignacio; Waters, Eric; Zhu, Yaguang

Abstract: Attending meetings is a common activity where people accomplish tasks and extend ... Expand

Abstract: Attending meetings is a common activity where people accomplish tasks and extend their relationships. But what happens when a meeting is over? Is that the end of the meeting conversation? This study empirically demonstrates that meetings are not discrete events; rather they are a form of persistent conversation processes, involving combinations of ICTs and face-toface communication. Conversations between meetings contribute to a meeting process-perspective and link to the development of bonding and bridging social capital. The findings suggest that the frequency of face-to-face conversations and text messaging between meetings, positively impact bonding social capital. Peoples’ attitudes toward continuing conversations between meetings positively impacts bridging social capital. The frequency of using many contemporary ICTs—e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and GroupMe—between meetings was not a significant predictor in developing social capital, even in a sample of young adults. Collapse

Topics: social capital online chat social media information system use Google+

Methods: data transformation factor analysis linear regression analysis survey design survey

Theories: sociomaterialism theory