credibility in e-wom

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Credibility in E- WOM How review perceptions impact their persuasiveness Natalie Van Hemelen (KULeuven), Peeter W. J. Verlegh (UVA) & Tim Smits (KULeuven)

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Credibility in E-WOM. How review perceptions impact their persuasiveness. Natalie Van Hemelen ( KULeuven ), Peeter W. J. Verlegh (UVA) & Tim Smits ( KULeuven ) . Theoretical background: Introduction. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Credibility  in E-WOM

Credibility in E-WOMHow review perceptions impact their

persuasiveness

Natalie Van Hemelen (KULeuven), Peeter W. J. Verlegh (UVA) & Tim Smits (KULeuven)

Page 2: Credibility  in E-WOM

Theoretical background: Introduction• With the advent of social media, E-WOM and online

consumer reviews became increasingly popular

• Online consumer reviewso “Online recommendations about products, services,

organizations or brands, based on consumers’ personal experiences”

o E.g., Yelp

Page 3: Credibility  in E-WOM

Succes and impact of online review sites• People attach a lot of importance to the non-commercial

opinion of social others (Fong & Burton, 2004)

• Online reviews (often) perceived as impartial People are less suspicious about their credibility

o 72% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

o 58% trust products that have positive online reviews

Reviews have a strong persuasive impact on persons’ attitudes

But impact depends on a lot of factors: valence, credebility recommendation source, etc.

Page 4: Credibility  in E-WOM

Valence and perceived credibility• Debate: Positive OR negative reviews most impactful?

o Psychology & Consumer research: Negative information stronger impact because it is perceived as more diagnostic

>< But many studies found the opposite: Positive E-WOM more impactful than negative...

• Floh and collegeaus (2009): many researchers only take perceived valence into account (see also Sussan et al., 2006; Willemsen et al., 2012)

Page 5: Credibility  in E-WOM

Valence and perceived credibility

• Review’s valence and credibilty cannot be assumed to be independent from each other...

Current study: Combined persuasive impact of perceived valence and credibility

Page 6: Credibility  in E-WOM

Hypotheses (1)• Given the previous, we predict that valence and credibility will both

have an effect on the receiver’s product attitude

• Valence: Straightforward effectH1: Positive reviews (vs negative ones) will increase the attitude towards the product

• Credibility: Moderated effect H2a: For positive reviews, higher credibility will increase

the attitude towards the product

H2b: For negative reviews, higher credibility will decrease the attitude towards the product

Page 7: Credibility  in E-WOM

Hypotheses (2)

• But, valence is also likely to affect credibility...

• Rationale: Negative information Attention Source questioning

• H3: Positive reviews (vs negative ones) wil increase the review’s perceived credibility

Page 8: Credibility  in E-WOM

Moderated mediation model

*Type 1 Model as outlined by Preacher, Rucker & Hayes (2007)

Page 9: Credibility  in E-WOM

Method (1)• Procedure & participants

o Between subjects design with 2 conditions (positive vs negative review)

o 89 Bachelor students of a Flemish University College• 62 men (69,7%), 27 women (30,3%)• Between 18 and 24 years old (M = 19,22; SD = 1,81)• Visit regularly a restaurant (M = 4,71, SD = 1,189)

o Online study • Read one of the 2 reviews• Different questions to assess their attitudes• Instruction to write a review themselves about the restaurant• Afterwards 3 raters coded the reviews

Page 10: Credibility  in E-WOM

Method (2)• Stimuli

Page 11: Credibility  in E-WOM

Method (3)• Measures

o Attitude restaurant• 10 (7-point) bipolar rating scales: qualitative – not qualitative,

creative – uncreative, attractive – unattractive,…• Total attitude score: mean of the scores on the 10 rating scales

(Cronbach’s α = .953, M = 41.287, SD = 10.959)

o Credibility review• 4 (7-point) bipolar rating scales: honest – dishonest, credible – incredible,…• Total credibility score: mean of the scores on the 4 rating scales• (Cronbach’s α = .687, M = 3.862, SD = 1.645)

Page 12: Credibility  in E-WOM

Results• Proposed model confirmed!

*Bootstrapping Macro SPSS (model 74), Hayes et al. (5000 samples)

Page 13: Credibility  in E-WOM

Hypothesis 1

Valence review Attitude restaurant

b = 1.511, p < .001

Page 14: Credibility  in E-WOM

Hypotheses 2a & 2b

b = .141, p

= .129

b = .495*

* p < .001

Page 15: Credibility  in E-WOM

Hypothesis 3

b = .347, p < .001

Page 16: Credibility  in E-WOM

Moderated mediation model

b = .347*

b = .141,

p = .129

b = .495*

b = 1.511*(b = -1.318*)

*p < .001

Page 17: Credibility  in E-WOM

Future research• In our study the findings only hold for one type of reviews

o In a follow-up study, we want to test whether the findings also hold for other types of reviews, products,...

• Future research can further investigate why negative reviews are exactly perceived as less credible than positive ones

Page 18: Credibility  in E-WOM

Thank you for your attention!