Relative persuasiveness of repurchase intentions versus recommendations in online reviews

Prashanth Ravula, Subhash Jha and Abhijit Biswas

Journal of Retailing, 2022, vol. 98, issue 4, 724-740

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of loyalty expressions (i.e., repurchase intentions vs. recommendations) on review persuasiveness. Specifically, we propose that repurchase intentions have a stronger positive effect on review persuasiveness compared to recommendations because of reviewer credibility. We test the above proposition using both an empirical dataset and multiple experimental studies. In addition, we examine frequency of purchase as a boundary condition for our proposition. Accordingly, we find that for frequent purchases, repurchase intentions (vs. recommendations) increases credibility, which, in turn, augments review persuasiveness. For infrequent purchases, however, we observe that recommendations (vs. repurchase intentions) enhance review persuasiveness, which occurs because of increased credibility. This research offers contributions to theory in the areas of online reviews, loyalty, source credibility, and cue-diagnosticity, as well as to practice regarding how firms should seek to elicit loyalty expressions (i.e., repurchase intentions vs. recommendations) when soliciting reviews.

Keywords: Online reviews; Loyalty expressions; Repurchase intentions; Recommendations; Reviewer credibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jouret:v:98:y:2022:i:4:p:724-740

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2022.06.001

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