Effect of Online Review Chunking on Product Attitude: The Moderating Role of Motivation to Think

ABSTRACT

Online reviews are an important source of product information that influences consumers’ product attitude and purchase behavior. This research proposes review chunking, that is, grouping reviews by valence, as a newly recognized factor that influences the persuasive effect of online reviews. In particular, this study examines the differential effects of review chunking on product attitude for consumers with high versus low motivation to think. The results from two experiments show that for consumers with low motivation to think, review chunking has a negative effect on product attitude. For consumers with high motivation to think, the effect of review chunking depends on whether they read positive or negative reviews first. These findings extend our understanding of the factors that influence the persuasiveness of online reviews and provide practical implications to online retailers on how to influence consumers’ product attitude by changing the default criteria of the sorting and filtering aids on their online review systems.

KEY WORDS AND PHRASES:

• eWOM
• information chunking
• motivation to think
• online reviews
• product attitude
• review recall
• review valence

Acknowledgments

This research project is supported by research grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 71472009 and no. 711021041) and the fundamental research funds for the Central Universities and the research funds of Renmin University of China.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jun Pang

JUN PANG is an assistant professor of marketing at the School of Business, Renmin University, China. Her research interests include emotions, cross-cultural psychology, and social influences on consumer behavior. Her works have been published in the Journal of Marketing, Decision Support Systems, and other journals.

Lingyun Qiu

LINGYUN QIU (corresponding author: [email protected]) is an associate professor of information systems at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, China. He received his Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of British Columbia. His research interests include social interactions in electronic commerce and virtual environments, online consumer behaviors, and human–computer interactions. His work has been published in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, and others.