Consumer Adoption of Consumer-Created vs. Expert-Created Information: Moderating Role of Prior Product Attitude

Do-Hyung Park
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Do-Hyung Park: Graduate School of Business IT, Kookmin University, Seoul 02707, Korea

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-12

Abstract: Today, consumer-created information such as online consumer reviews have become important and popular, playing a key role in consumer decision making. Compared with expert-created information, each piece of information is less powerful or persuasive, but their aggregation can be more credible and acceptable. This concept is called collective intelligence knowledge. This study focuses on the persuasive effect on consumer product attitudes of consumer-created information compared to expert-created information. Using source credibility and familiarity theory, the study reveals how prior brand attitudes can play a moderating role in the persuasive effect of consumer-created information and expert-created information. Specifically, this study shows how consumer-created information is more persuasive when consumers have more favorable prior brand attitudes, while expert-created information is more persuasive when consumers have less favorable prior brand attitudes. Based on the results, this study proposes practical strategies for information structure, curation, and presentation. If a company has a good-quality brand evaluation of its products, it should increase the weight of consumer-created information such as online consumer reviews. Otherwise, the company needs to first improve brand evaluation through expert-created information such as third-parties or power-blogger reviews.

Keywords: collective intelligence; online consumer reviews; third-party reviews; source credibility; source familiarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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