IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joinma/v36y2016icp91-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Examining Biased Assimilation of Brand-related Online Reviews

Author

Listed:
  • Mafael, Alexander
  • Gottschalk, Sabrina A.
  • Kreis, Henning

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of pre-existing brand attitudes on consumer processing of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). This topic is particularly important for brands that simultaneously possess strongly pronounced proponents as well as opponents. Two experimental studies using univalent (study 1, N=538) and mixed (study 2, N=262) sets of online reviews find indications for biased assimilation effects of eWOM processing. Consumers perceive positive (negative) arguments in online reviews as more (less) persuasive when having a positive (negative) attitude towards the brand. Perceived persuasiveness in turn influences behavioral intentions and acts as a mediator on the relationship between attitude and behavioral intentions. We examine two moderators of this effect. When priming individuals to focus on other consumers (vs. a self-focus prime), the biased assimilation effect is weaker (study 3a, N=131). In contrast, we show that biased assimilation becomes stronger under conditions of high (vs. low) cognitive impairment (study 3b, N=124). Our findings contribute to the literature on the relationship between eWOM and brands and advance our understanding of potential outcomes of brand polarization.

Suggested Citation

  • Mafael, Alexander & Gottschalk, Sabrina A. & Kreis, Henning, 2016. "Examining Biased Assimilation of Brand-related Online Reviews," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 91-106.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joinma:v:36:y:2016:i:c:p:91-106
    DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2016.06.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094996816300329
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.intmar.2016.06.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clee, Mona A & Wicklund, Robert A, 1980. "Consumer Behavior and Psychological Reactance," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 6(4), pages 389-405, March.
    2. King, Robert Allen & Racherla, Pradeep & Bush, Victoria D., 2014. "What We Know and Don't Know About Online Word-of-Mouth: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 167-183.
    3. Priester, Joseph R, et al, 2004. "The A[supercript 2]SC[superscript 2] Model: The Influence of Attitudes and Attitude Strength on Consideration and Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 30(4), pages 574-587, March.
    4. Chris Forman & Anindya Ghose & Batia Wiesenfeld, 2008. "Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 19(3), pages 291-313, September.
    5. Decker, Reinhold & Trusov, Michael, 2010. "Estimating aggregate consumer preferences from online product reviews," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 293-307.
    6. Gensler, Sonja & Völckner, Franziska & Liu-Thompkins, Yuping & Wiertz, Caroline, 2013. "Managing Brands in the Social Media Environment," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 242-256.
    7. Minnema, Alec & Bijmolt, Tammo H.A. & Gensler, Sonja & Wiesel, Thorsten, 2016. "To Keep or Not to Keep: Effects of Online Customer Reviews on Product Returns," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 253-267.
    8. Margaret A. Neale & Max H. Bazerman, 1983. "The Role of Perspective-Taking Ability in Negotiating under Different Forms of Arbitration," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 36(3), pages 378-388, April.
    9. Purnawirawan, Nathalia & De Pelsmacker, Patrick & Dens, Nathalie, 2012. "Balance and Sequence in Online Reviews: How Perceived Usefulness Affects Attitudes and Intentions," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 244-255.
    10. Bargh, John A, 2002. "Losing Consciousness: Automatic Influences on Consumer Judgment, Behavior, and Motivation," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(2), pages 280-285, September.
    11. Aaker, Jennifer L & Lee, Angela Y, 2001. ""I" Seek Pleasures and "We" Avoid Pains: The Role of Self-Regulatory Goals in Information Processing and Persuasion," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 28(1), pages 33-49, June.
    12. Dipankar Chakravarti & Andrew Mitchell & Richard Staelin, 1979. "Judgment Based Marketing Decision Models: An Experimental Investigation of the Decision Calculus Approach," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(3), pages 251-263, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Uttam Chakraborty & Savita Bhat, 2018. "Effect of Credible Reviews on Brand Image: A Mixed Method Approach," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 7(1), pages 13-22, January.
    2. Agnieszka Zablocki & Bodo Schlegelmilch & Michael J. Houston, 2019. "How valence, volume and variance of online reviews influence brand attitudes," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 9(1), pages 61-77, June.
    3. Elvira Ismagilova & Emma L. Slade & Nripendra P. Rana & Yogesh K. Dwivedi, 0. "The Effect of Electronic Word of Mouth Communications on Intention to Buy: A Meta-Analysis," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-24.
    4. Ana Babić Rosario & Kristine Valck & Francesca Sotgiu, 2020. "Conceptualizing the electronic word-of-mouth process: What we know and need to know about eWOM creation, exposure, and evaluation," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 422-448, May.
    5. Bo Yang & Juliana L. Barbati & Yunjin Choi, 2021. "Will E-Cigarette Modified Risk Messages with a Nicotine Warning Polarize Smokers’ Beliefs about the Efficacy of Switching Completely to E-Cigarettes in Reducing Smoking-Related Risks?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(11), pages 1-15, June.
    6. Elvira Ismagilova & Emma L. Slade & Nripendra P. Rana & Yogesh K. Dwivedi, 2020. "The Effect of Electronic Word of Mouth Communications on Intention to Buy: A Meta-Analysis," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 1203-1226, October.
    7. Klostermann, Jan & Plumeyer, Anja & Böger, Daniel & Decker, Reinhold, 2018. "Extracting brand information from social networks: Integrating image, text, and social tagging data," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 538-556.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dominik Gutt & Jürgen Neumann & Steffen Zimmermann & Dennis Kundisch & Jianqing Chen, 2018. "Design of Review Systems - A Strategic Instrument to shape Online Review Behavior and Economic Outcomes," Working Papers Dissertations 42, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    2. Agnieszka Zablocki & Bodo Schlegelmilch & Michael J. Houston, 2019. "How valence, volume and variance of online reviews influence brand attitudes," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 9(1), pages 61-77, June.
    3. Ana Babić Rosario & Kristine Valck & Francesca Sotgiu, 2020. "Conceptualizing the electronic word-of-mouth process: What we know and need to know about eWOM creation, exposure, and evaluation," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 422-448, May.
    4. Kick, Markus, 2015. "Social Media Research: A Narrative Review," EconStor Preprints 182506, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    5. Gottschalk, Sabrina A. & Mafael, Alexander, 2017. "Cutting Through the Online Review Jungle — Investigating Selective eWOM Processing," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 89-104.
    6. Tingting Song & Jinghua Huang & Yong Tan & Yifan Yu, 2019. "Using User- and Marketer-Generated Content for Box Office Revenue Prediction: Differences Between Microblogging and Third-Party Platforms," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(1), pages 191-203, March.
    7. Azer, Jaylan & Anker, Thomas & Taheri, Babak & Tinsley, Ross, 2023. "Consumer-Driven racial stigmatization: The moderating role of race in online consumer-to-consumer reviews," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    8. Kaushik, Kapil & Mishra, Rajhans & Rana, Nripendra P. & Dwivedi, Yogesh K., 2018. "Exploring reviews and review sequences on e-commerce platform: A study of helpful reviews on Amazon.in," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 21-32.
    9. Chan, Haksin & Yang, Morgan X. & Zeng, Kevin J., 2022. "Bolstering ratings and reviews systems on multi-sided platforms: A co-creation perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 208-217.
    10. Bastos, Wilson, 2020. "“Speaking of Purchases”: How Conversational Potential Determines Consumers' Willingness to Exert Effort for Experiential Versus Material Purchases," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-16.
    11. Pei-Yu Chen & Yili Hong & Ying Liu, 2018. "The Value of Multidimensional Rating Systems: Evidence from a Natural Experiment and Randomized Experiments," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4629-4647, October.
    12. He, Yi & You, Ya & Chen, Qimei, 2020. "Our conditional love for the underdog: The effect of brand positioning and the lay theory of achievement on WOM," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 210-222.
    13. Bin Guo & Shasha Zhou, 2017. "What makes population perception of review helpfulness: an information processing perspective," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 585-608, December.
    14. Junegak Joung & Kiwook Jung & Sanghyun Ko & Kwangsoo Kim, 2018. "Customer Complaints Analysis Using Text Mining and Outcome-Driven Innovation Method for Market-Oriented Product Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, December.
    15. Hyunwoo Hwangbo & Jonghyuk Kim, 2019. "A Text Mining Approach for Sustainable Performance in the Film Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-16, June.
    16. Theodoros Lappas & Gaurav Sabnis & Georgios Valkanas, 2016. "The Impact of Fake Reviews on Online Visibility: A Vulnerability Assessment of the Hotel Industry," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 940-961, December.
    17. Sheng, Jie, 2019. "Being Active in Online Communications: Firm Responsiveness and Customer Engagement Behaviour," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 40-51.
    18. Roma, Paolo & Aloini, Davide, 2019. "How does brand-related user-generated content differ across social media? Evidence reloaded," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 322-339.
    19. Marchand, André & Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten & Wiertz, Caroline, 2017. "Not all digital word of mouth is created equal: Understanding the respective impact of consumer reviews and microblogs on new product success," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 336-354.
    20. Sulin Ba & Yuan Jin & Xinxin Li & Xianghua Lu, 2020. "One Size Fits All? The Differential Impact of Online Reviews and Coupons," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(10), pages 2403-2424, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joinma:v:36:y:2016:i:c:p:91-106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-interactive-marketing/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.