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 With the advent of social media, E-WOM and online consumer reviews became increasingly popular Online consumer reviews o “Online recommendations about products, services, organizations or brands, based on consumers’ personal experiences” o E.g., Yelp

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.

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)

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

Hypotheses (1) Given the previous, we predict that valence and credibility will both have an effect on the receiver’s product attitude Valence: Straightforward effect H1: 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

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

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

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

Method (2) Stimuli

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 = , SD = ) 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)

Results Proposed model confirmed! *Bootstrapping Macro SPSS (model 74), Hayes et al. (5000 samples)

Hypothesis 1 Valence reviewAttitude restaurant b = 1.511, p <.001

Hypotheses 2a & 2b b =.141, p =.129 b =.495* * p <.001

Hypothesis 3 b =.347, p <.001

Moderated mediation model b =.347* b =.141, p =.129 b =.495* b = 1.511* (b = *) *p <.001

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

Thank you for your attention!