(When) Is a Summary Really Worth a Thousand Words? – How Textual and Visual Customer Review Summaries Affect Cognitive Load During Online Purchase Decisions

Stefanie Erlebach ()
Additional contact information
Stefanie Erlebach: Ulm University, Institute of Business Analytics

A chapter in People, Society, and Ethical Challenges of Information Systems, 2026, pp 187-202 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Online customer reviews are crucial to inform customers’ online purchase decisions. However, the complex nature and immense volume of customer reviews can easily overload customers’ cognitive resources, with significant negative consequences for customers and online shopping sites. In response, first online shopping sites provide summaries of textual review content (i.e., customer review summaries) alongside individual customer reviews. Building on cognitive load theory, this study examines how customer review summaries in textual and visual presentation formats affect customers’ cognitive load during online purchase decisions. With an incentive-compatible online experiment, we find that displaying customer review summaries reduces cognitive load. While textual and visual review summaries are equally effective, displaying both textual and visual review summaries reduces cognitive load the most. These findings contribute to literature on the design of customer review systems and provide relevant insights for practitioners on how to support customers’ online purchase decisions.

Keywords: Customer Review Summaries; Presentation Format; Cognitive Load (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:lnichp:978-3-032-08486-6_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783032084866

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-08486-6_13

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organization from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().