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Abstract
With the broad reach of the Internet, online users frequently resort to various word-of-mouth (WOM) sources, such as online user reviews and professional reviews, during online decision making. Although prior studies generally agree on the importance of online WOM, we have little knowledge of the interplay between online user reviews and professional reviews. This paper empirically investigates a mediation model in which online user reviews mediate the impact of professional reviews on online user decisions. Using software download data, we show that a higher professional rating not only directly promotes software download but also results in more active user-generated WOM interactions, which indirectly lead to more downloads. The indirect impact of professional reviews can be as large as 20 percent of the corresponding total impact. These findings deepen our understanding of online WOM effect, and provide managerial suggestions about WOM marketing and the prediction of online user choices.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Refik Soyer, and seminar participants at George Washington University for valuable comments on this research. All errors are the authors’.
Supplemental File
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2016.1172460
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Wenqi Zhou
Wenqi Zhou ([email protected]; corresponding author) is an assistant professor of information systems management at Palumbo-Donahue School of Business, Duquesne University. She received her Ph.D. in information systems from George Washington University. Her research focuses on understanding social, economic, and managerial aspects of information technology and the Internet by analyzing large-scale online data. Specifically, her research interests include social media and online user-generated content, the economics of e-commerce, Internet marketing, and online communities and intermediaries. Her work has been published in Decision Support Systems, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, and IEEE Computer, among others.
Wenjing Duan
Wenjing Duan ([email protected]) is an associate professor of information systems and technology management at the School of Business, George Washington University. She received her Ph.D. in information systems from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests lie on the intersection among the fields of information systems, economics, and marketing. Among her primary research interests are the economics of e-commerce, online communities and social networks, Internet marketing, and online intermediaries. She has published in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Communications of ACM, Journal of Retailing, and Decision Support Systems. She serves on the Editorial Boards of Information Systems Research and Decision Support Systems.