Influence of Images in Online Reviews for Search Goods on Helpfulness

Osterbrink Lars (), Alpar Paul () and Seher Alexander ()
Additional contact information
Osterbrink Lars: Information Systems, University of Marburg, Universitätsstr. 24, Marburg, Hesse35032, Germany
Alpar Paul: Information Systems, University of Marburg, Universitätsstr. 24, Marburg, Hesse35032, Germany
Seher Alexander: Information Systems, University of Marburg, Universitätsstr. 24, Marburg, Hesse35032, Germany

Review of Marketing Science, 2020, vol. 18, issue 1, 43-73

Abstract: Reviewing and rating are important features of many social media websites, but they are found on many e-commerce sites too. The combination of social interaction and e-commerce is sometimes referred to as social commerce to indicate that people are supporting each other in the process of buying goods and services. Rgeviews of other consumers have a significant effect on consumer choice because they are usually considered authentic and more trustworthy than information presented by a vendor. The collaborative effort of consumers helps to make the right purchase decision (or prevent from a wrong one). The effect of reviews has often been researched in terms of helpfulness as indicated by their readers. Images are an important factor of helpfulness in reviews of experience goods where personal tastes and use play an important role. We extend this research to search goods where objective characteristics seem to prevail. In addition, we analyze potential interaction with other variables. The empirical study is performed with regression analyses on 3,483 search good reviews from Amazon.com followed by a matched pair analysis of 186 review pairs. We find that images have a significant positive effect on helpfulness of reviews of search goods too. This is especially true in case of short and ambiguous reviews.

Keywords: online reviews; product reviews; search goods; online markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/roms-2019-0072 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:revmkt:v:18:y:2020:i:1:p:43-73:n:3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/roms/html

DOI: 10.1515/roms-2019-0072

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Marketing Science is currently edited by Ram C. Rao

More articles in Review of Marketing Science from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().