Value destruction in exaggerated online reviews

By Melissa A. Baker, Kawon Kim. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 2019

113 citations recorded by the source corpus.

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the underlying motivations, attitudes and behaviors of exaggerated review posters and readers by examining the effect of review valence, emotional expression and language complexity on perceived poster, website and firm trustworthiness and subsequent behavioral intentions.Design/methodology/approachThis research uses a mixed-method approach using the qualitative critical incident technique (CIT) and quantitative experimental design. Study 1 uses CIT to examine exaggerated online reviews from the poster perspective where Study 2 uses CIT to examine readers’ perceptions of exaggerated reviews. Study 3 conducts a between-subjects experimental design examining the impact of valence (positive vs negative) × emotion (low vs high) × language (vague vs detailed) on trustworthiness and behavior intention.FindingsResults of the two qualitative studies (Study 1 and 2) find posters and readers use language complexity and emotions in exaggerated reviews. The results from the quantitative experimental design study (Study 3) find that language style and emotions influence customer perceptions of poster, website and firm trustworthiness, which also mediates the relationship between the qualitative aspects of review text on behavioral intentions.Practical implicationsThe findings provide multiple practical implications on the prevalence of exaggerated online reviews and the importance of language and emotion in determining customer perceptions and behavioral intentions.Originality/valueBy focusing on both readers and posters in exaggerated eWOM, specific motivations, emotions and language, this research contributes to the literature of online reviews, customer misbehavior, trustworthiness, language use and value co-destruction in online environments.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8e4ec65ca7548f7d9bfea1973af55a04c0022a76

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Citations in the corpus

Setting the future of digital and social media marketing research: Perspectives and research propositions (2020, methodology): “Given the increasing importance of social media as a communications medium, this contribution reflects on the challenges associated with developing a coherent body of theoretically grounded knowledge in social media marketing that can also inform practice and offers proposals for future research.”