Publication
Title
To tell, not to yell : the effect of writer's intents on readers’ perceived helpfulness of online product reviews
Author
Abstract
Perceived review helpfulness has been investigated extensively; however, the influence of the review writer's intents behind a review has not been considered. This study investigates the effect of the writer's intents to provide information, express emotions, or call for action on reviews’ helpfulness, thereby bridging the gap between the writer's perspective and the reader's perspective. The writer's intents are operationalized through speech acts, an implicit, yet systematic, approach in which the intents of the writer are captured at the linguistic level, that is, how things are said. A unique parallel approach based on both readers’ perceptions and linguistic theory is used to operationalize the speech acts. This approach allows multiple speech acts per sentence, and it can estimate the influence of each speech act separately. The results show that assertive acts positively impact review helpfulness, whereas expressive and call-for-action acts have a negative effect. This confirms previous literature showing that the major drivers of review helpfulness are often related to information delivery. In this research, the idea that consumers like reviews with accurate information is detected at the level of the writer's intent, which is new in the context of text analysis to assess online review helpfulness.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Journal of interactive marketing. - New York
Publication
New York : 2024
ISSN
1094-9968
DOI
10.1177/10949968231223924
Volume/pages
59 :3 (2024) , p. 312-328
ISI
001171937700001
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
The author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the accepted for publication version Available from 25.02.2025
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 07.03.2024
Last edited 05.11.2024
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