“Why Would I Read a Mobile Review?” Device Compatibility Perceptions and Effects on Perceived Helpfulness

The proliferation of mobile devices means that mobile-generated customer reviews are on the rise, though research into their peculiarities and appraisals is rare. With field data and a scenario experiment, the current research demonstrates how recipients perceive mobile-generated customer reviews fundamentally differently from nonmobile-generated reviews. First, behavioral field data provide evidence that consumers discount the helpfulness of mobile reviews due to their text-specific content and style particularities. Second, the scenario experiment shows that identifying a review as written on a mobile device lowers recipients’ perceptions of its value, but only if they use a nonmobile device to read the review. Recipients rely on device information as a source cue to assess compatibility. If they perceive themselves as compatible with the device, recipients perceive the review as more helpful because they attribute the review's content to the quality of the reviewed object; if they regard it as incompatible, recipients assume the review reflects the personal dispositions of the reviewer and discount its helpfulness. Managers of online opinion platforms thus must acknowledge the peculiarities of mobile-generated reviews and the impact of tagging content as mobile or not.