Comprehension and Assessment of Product Reviews: A Review-Product Congruity Proposition

This work anchors on the theories of cognitive fit and schema congruity to advance a review-product congruity proposition. The proposition states that the effects of product review content (either attribute or experience based) on the product review comprehension (reflected by perceived cognitive effort and review comprehension time) and assessment (manifested by perceived review helpfulness) of a consumer are contingent on the assessed product type (either search or experience product). The results of our first experiment support the proposition by revealing that the two matching conditions, (1) attribute-based reviews describing a search product and (2) experience-based reviews describing an experience product, could lead consumers to perceive higher review helpfulness and lower cognitive effort (subjective measure) to comprehend the reviews. However, the subjective evaluation of cognitive effort is not reinforced by the resulting review comprehension time (an objective assessment of comprehension effort), which suggests that consumers spend significantly more time processing reviews in the presence of the two matching conditions. A second experiment was conducted using the think-aloud method to gain further insights into the effects. We found that under the review-product matching conditions, consumers engage in deeper-level comprehension and expend more time in comprehension without realizing it, compared to consumers under the mismatching conditions. This research extends our current understanding of how review content and product reviews jointly influence the comprehension and assessment behavior of the consumer, and provides guidelines on the identification and the presentation of reviews to facilitate the judgment and decision making of potential consumers.

[1]  H. H. Clark,et al.  What's new? Acquiring New information as a process in comprehension , 1974 .

[2]  R. E. Parker,et al.  Memory for descriptive and spatial information in complex pictures. , 1976, Journal of experimental psychology. Human learning and memory.

[3]  Timothy D. Wilson,et al.  Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. , 1977 .

[4]  M. Sujan,et al.  Consumer Knowledge: Effects on Evaluation Strategies Mediating Consumer Judgments , 1985 .

[5]  John T. Cacioppo,et al.  The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion , 1986, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.

[6]  J. Bettman,et al.  Effects of Consumer Expectations on Information Processing in Selling Encounters , 1986 .

[7]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Process Tracing Methods in Decision Support Systems Research: Exploring the Black Box , 1987, MIS Q..

[8]  John G. Lynch,et al.  Choices from Sets Including Remembered Brands: Use of Recalled Attributes and Prior Overall Evaluations , 1988 .

[9]  Alice M. Tybout,et al.  Schema Congruity as a Basis for Product Evaluation , 1989 .

[10]  Stephen J. Hoch,et al.  Ambiguity, Processing Strategy, and Advertising-Evidence Interactions , 1989 .

[11]  Fred D. Davis.  Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology , 1989, MIS Q..

[12]  Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa,et al.  The effect of task demands and graphical format on information processing strategies , 1989 .

[13]  Dennis F. Galletta,et al.  Cognitive Fit: An Empirical Study of Information Acquisition , 1991, Inf. Syst. Res..

[14]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Development of an Instrument to Measure the Perceptions of Adopting an Information Technology Innovation , 1991, Inf. Syst. Res..

[15]  D. Mick,et al.  Levels of Subjective Comprehension in Advertising Processing and Their Relations to Ad Perceptions, Attitudes, and Memory , 1992 .

[16]  R. C. Goodstein.  Category-based Applications and Extensions in Advertising: Motivating More Extensive Ad Processing , 1993 .

[17]  Maarten van Someren,et al.  The Think Aloud Method: A Practical Guide to Modelling Cognitive Processes , 1994 .

[18]  J. Lynch,et al.  The matchup effect of spokesperson and product congruency: A schema theory interpretation , 1994 .

[19]  Iris Vessey,et al.  Research Report - The Relevance of Application Domain Knowledge: The Case of Computer Program Comprehension , 1995, Inf. Syst. Res..

[20]  Ritu Agarwal,et al.  Cognitive Fit in Requirements Modeling: A Study of Object and Process Methodologies , 1996, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[21]  Ellen Garbarino,et al.  Cognitive Effort, Affect, and Choice , 1997 .

[22]  Robert E. Smith,et al.  Consumer Processing of Product Trial and the Influence of Prior Advertising: A Structural Modeling Approach , 1998 .

[23]  Stephen R. McDaniel.  An investigation of match‐up effects in sport sponsorship advertising: The implications of consumer advertising schemas , 1999 .

[24]  F. Kardes,et al.  The Role of Direction of Comparison, Attribute-Based Processing, and Attitude-Based Processing in Consumer Preference , 1999 .

[25]  Akhilesh Chandra,et al.  Representational congruence and information retrieval: Towards an extended model of cognitive fit , 1999, Decis. Support Syst..

[26]  Ashesh Mukherjee,et al.  The Effect of Novel Attributes on Product Evaluation : Explaining Consumer Resistance to Technological Innovation , 2001 .

[27]  William P. Eveland,et al.  Examining Information Processing on the World Wide Web Using Think Aloud Protocols , 2000 .

[28]  John G. Lynch,et al.  Wine Online: Search Costs Affect Competition on Price, Quality, and Distribution , 2000 .

[29]  Katherine A. Rawson,et al.  Are performance predictions for text based on ease of processing? , 2002, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[30]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  The Influence of Multimedia on Improving the Comprehension of Organizational Information , 2002, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[31]  Stephanie Watts,et al.  Informational Influence in Organizations: An Integrated Approach to Knowledge Adoption , 2003, Inf. Syst. Res..

[32]  Angela Y. Lee,et al.  The Effect of Conceptual and Perceptual Fluency on Brand Evaluation , 2004 .

[33]  Etta Y. I. Chen,et al.  Consumers' Online Information Search Behavior and the Phenomenon of Search vs. Experience Products , 2004 .

[34]  David L. Mothersbaugh,et al.  Information content and consumer readership of print ads: A comparison of search and experience products , 2004 .

[35]  Kar Yan Tam,et al.  The Effects of Information Format and Shopping Task on Consumers' Online Shopping Behavior: A Cognitive Fit Perspective , 2004, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[36]  T. Gog,et al.  Uncovering Expertise-Related Differences in Troubleshooting Performance: Combining Eye Movement and Concurrent Verbal Protocol Data , 2005 .

[37]  Kwok Kee Wei,et al.  Consumers' Acceptance of Electronic Word-of-Mouth Recommendations: Effects of Multiple Communication Elements and Processing Motivation , 2006, ICIS.

[38]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  The Effects of Presentation Formats and Task Complexity on Online Consumers' Product Understanding , 2007, MIS Q..

[39]  Subhash Sharma,et al.  Effects of online communication practices on consumer perceptions of performance uncertainty for search and experience goods , 2007 .

[40]  Nada Nasr Bechwati,et al.  Word of Mouse , 2008 .

[41]  Do-Hyung Park,et al.  eWOM overload and its effect on consumer behavioral intention depending on consumer involvement , 2008, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[42]  Nicholas H. Lurie,et al.  Searching for Experience on the Web: An Empirical Examination of Consumer Behavior for Search and Experience Goods , 2009 .

[43]  David Schuff,et al.  What Makes a Helpful Review? A Study of Customer Reviews on Amazon.com , 2010 .

[44]  R. Schindler,et al.  Perceived Helpfulness of Online Consumer Reviews: The Role of Message Content and Style , 2010 .

[45]  Qing Cao,et al.  Exploring determinants of voting for the "helpfulness" of online user reviews: A text mining approach , 2011, Decis. Support Syst..

[46]  David Schuff,et al.  Is It the Review or the Reviewer? a Multi-Method Approach to Determine the Antecedents of Online Review Helpfulness , 2011, 2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[47]  Jin Li,et al.  Online Persuasion: How the Written Word Drives WOM , 2011, Journal of Advertising Research.

[48]  Joseph S. Valacich,et al.  What Signals Are You Sending? How Website Quality Influences Perceptions of Product Quality and Purchase Intentions , 2011, MIS Q..

[49]  John D. Wells,et al.  WHAT SIGNAL ARE YOU SENDING ? HOW WEBSITE QUALITY INFLUENCES PERCEPTIONS OF PRODUCT QUALITY AND PURCHASE INTENTIONS 1 , 2011 .

[50]  Yue Pan,et al.  Born Unequal: A Study of the Helpfulness of User-Generated Product Reviews , 2011 .

[51]  Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis,et al.  Estimating the Helpfulness and Economic Impact of Product Reviews: Mining Text and Reviewer Characteristics , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

[52]  Yongjun Sung,et al.  Shifting Selves and Product Reviews: How the Effects of Product Reviews Vary Depending on the Self-Views and Self-Regulatory Goals of Consumers , 2012, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[53]  Deborah Compeau,et al.  The Effects of Self-Regulated Learning Processes on E-Learning Outcomes in Organizational Settings , 2012, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[54]  Angelika Dimoka,et al.  On Product Uncertainty in Online Markets: Theory and Evidence , 2011, MIS Q..

[55]  Geng Cui,et al.  Terms of Use , 2003 .

[56]  R. Schindler,et al.  Perceived helpfulness of online consumer reviews: The role of message content and style: Perceived helpfulness of online consumer reviews , 2012 .

[57]  B. King,et al.  Advertising Strategies to Increase Usage Frequency , 2016 .