The helpfulness of online reviews. Images in review content and the facial expressions of reviewers’ avatars
| Pages | 90-113 |
| Published date | 15 November 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2018-0251 |
| Date | 15 November 2019 |
| Author | Ming-Yi Chen,Ching-I Teng,Kuo-Wei Chiou |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
The helpfulness of online reviews
Images in review content and the facial
expressions of reviewers’avatars
Ming-Yi Chen
Department of Marketing, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan
Ching-I. Teng
Graduate Institute of Business and Management,
Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, and
Kuo-Wei Chiou
Department of Marketing, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose –Online reviewsare increasingly availablefor a wide range of products andservices in e-commerce.
Most consumersrely heavily on onlinereviews when making purchasedecisions, so an important topicis that of
understanding what makes some online reviews helpful in the eyes of consumers. Researchers have
demonstratedthe benefits of the presence of customerreviews to an online retailer,however, few studies have
investigated how images in review content and the facial expressions of reviewers’avatars influence the
judgment of online review helpfulness. This study draws on self-construal theory, attribution theory and
affect-as-information theoryto empirically test a modelof the interaction effects of imagesin review content and
the facialexpressions of reviewers’avatarson online reviewhelpfulness. Furthermore,the purpose of this paper
is to identify an underlying mechanism of causal attribution toward store performanceon the above effects.
Design/methodology/approach –This study conducted two online experiments. Study 1 is a 2 (images in
review content: one person with a product vs a group of people with a product) ×2 (facial expression of the
reviewer’s avatar: happy vs angry) between-subjects design. Study 2 is a 3 (image: product alone vs one
person with a product vs a group of people with a product) ×2 (facial expression of the reviewer’s avatar:
happy vs angry) ×3 (valence of the review: positive vs negative vs neutral) between-subjects design.
Findings –The results indicate that when consumers were exposed to a happy-looking avatar, they were
likely to express higher perceptions of online review helpfulness in response to an image showing a group of
people in a restaurant than they would for an image of one person in the same situation. In contrast, when
consumers were exposed to an angry-looking avatar, their perceptions of online review helpfulness did not
differ in response to images of either a group of people or of one person. Furthermore, cause attribution
toward store performance mediated the interaction between images in content of reviews and the facial
expression of a reviewer’s avatar on the perceptions of online review helpfulness.
Practical implications –The authors provide insights into how to develop guidelines on how online
reviews should be written so that readers perceive them to be helpful, and how to design effective reward
mechanisms for customer feedback.
Originality/value –Compared with previous studies, this study provides further contributions in three
ways. First, it contributes to the literature on review content by showing which images in reviews are deemed
to be helpful. Second, it extends previous findings from the literature relating to online peer reviews by
demonstrating the importance of facial expressions in reviewers’avatars (i.e. happy vs angry) when
explaining helpfulness, rather than the strength of purchase intent. Third, this study contributes by further
highlighting a novel mechanism which shows that a causal attribution toward store performance motivates
the perceptions of online review helpfulness.
Keywords Online review helpfulness, Causal attribution toward store performance,
Images in review content, Facial expression of reviewers’avatars
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Several online retailers have invested in peer review systems that enable customers to vote
on whether they found a review helpful in their purchase process, and have given incentives
to provide online content that customers may perceive to be helpful, such as Amazon.com
posting detailed guidelines for writing reviews. As the availability of customer reviews
Online Information Review
Vol. 44 No. 1, 2020
pp. 90-113
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-08-2018-0251
Received 27 August 2018
Revised 2 April 2019
28 July 2019
Accepted 10 October 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
90
OIR
44,1
becomes more widespread, simply offering online reviews is more likely to be insufficient to
attract consumers. Indeed, consumers often face high cognitive processing costs while
reading a large selection of reviews, and when too many reviews are available, they prefer to
read those that are helpful and useful. Consumer psychologists have observed that a helpful
product review significantly affects consumer perceptions and decision-making behavior in
the online shopping context (Chakravarti et al., 2006; Li et al., 2013). Hence, online retailers
must identify helpful product reviews and provide the needed help to assess product review
helpfulness, or to incorporate any helpful product reviews to enhance their online platform
usefulness. In practice, encouraging quality customer reviews does appear to be an
important component of the strategy of many online retailers, because helpful reviews can
create a source of differentiation. Thus, the central question that arises in this research is:
RQ1. What types of reviews do consumers find helpful?
To understand what makes some online reviews helpful in the eyes of consumers is a timely
and important topic.
There are three aspects driving the perceived helpfulness of online reviews, including
content-based features, source-based features and the product category (e.g. Li et al., 2013;
Guo and Zhou, 2017; Huang et al., 2018; Malik and Hussain, 2018; Siering et al., 2018;
Yin et al., 2014). Following Li et al.’s (2013) research, this study also only focuses on a
content-based factor (i.e. images in review content) and a source-based factor (i.e. the facial
expressions of reviewers’avatars), because online retailers could provide detailed guidelines
on how to post helpful reviews in line with these two factors.
The design of pictorial components or visuals is prominent in information processing
and persuasion in the field of advertising (McQuarrie, 2007). Pictures are used to attract
attention to content, to display a product, to demonstrate how it can fit into a consumer’s life
and to elicit an emotion (Clow et al., 2009; Small and Verrochi, 2009). Indeed, 75 percent of the
information absorbed by consumers is through visual observation (Cobb-Walgren and
Mohr, 1998). To our knowledge, there is little research which considers how the types of
images in review content influence the judgment of online review helpfulness.
Moreover, consumer reviews are usually posted anonymously and shared among
strangers (Sen and Lerman, 2007; Steffes and Burgee, 2009). Some websites allow reviewers
to present their own avatars, which are “computer generated visual representations of
people”(Nowak and Rauh, 2005, p. 153), along with their postings. Reviewers’avatars may
be taken as inference cues to help consumers form a perception of the person who wrote the
review (Talamo and Ligorio, 2001). Of the various customizable features of avatars
(e.g. facial expressions, skin color, hairstyle, clothes, etc.), emotional facial expressions of the
avatars may play an important role in helping consumers make inferences about the
dispositional traits of avatar users. Research has shown that people tend to infer the traits of
others based on their emotional facial expressions (Arya et al., 2006; Montepare and Dobish,
2003) and a reviewer with a happy-looking avatar will be perceived as higher in
agreeableness than a reviewer with an angry-looking avatar (Lee et al., 2013).
Several studies have found that causal attribution toward product/store/personal trait/
situation is an important mediating role on the effect of messages or tactics on persuasion
(Chiou et al., 2018; Lee and Youn, 2009; Lee et al., 2013; Sen and Lerman, 2007). According to
attribution theory (Folkes, 1988; Kelley, 1967, 1973), the definition of causal attribution toward
store performance is that consumers will attribute a store’s performance as a plausible cause
for the review content. The causal inferences are li kely to influence consumer judgment toward
the helpfulness of online reviews. Less attention has been paid to how the interplay effects of
review content and review source on perceptions of online review helpfulness are mediated by
causal attribution toward store performance. To summarize, this study intends to draw upon
self-construal theory (Singelis, 1994), attribution theory (Folkes, 1988; Jones and Nisbett, 1972;
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helpfulness of
online reviews
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