Emotional expressions in online user reviews: How they influence consumers' product evaluations

Junyong Kim and Pranjal Gupta

Journal of Business Research, 2012, vol. 65, issue 7, 985-992

Abstract: This article investigates an understudied aspect of online word-of-mouth (eWOM) — the effects of emotional expressions in eWOM. Two experiments investigate how consumers interpret emotional expressions in online user reviews and the subsequent impact on their product evaluations. The findings reveal that negative emotional expressions in a single negative review tend to decrease the reviews' informative value and make consumers' product evaluations less negative because consumers attribute the negative emotions to the reviewer's irrational dispositions. However, positive emotional expressions in a single positive review do not influence consumers' product evaluations significantly even though consumers attribute the positive emotions to the product. Next, when multiple convergent emotional expressions are present in multiple user reviews, both positive and negative emotional expressions increase informative value of the reviews and polarize consumers' product evaluations in the respective direction.

Keywords: Word-of-mouth; Emotions; Product evaluation; Emotional expressions; Electronic word-of-mouth; Online emotions; Emotional word-of-mouth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296311001305
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jbrese:v:65:y:2012:i:7:p:985-992

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.04.013

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().