Knowledge Management Research (지식경영연구)

The Knowledge Management Society of Korea (한국지식경영학회)
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The Impact of Online Review Content and Linguistic Style on Review Helpfulness

온라인 리뷰 콘텐츠와 언어 스타일이 리뷰 유용성에 미치는 영향

  • Li, Jiaen (College of Business, KwangWoon University) ;
  • Yan, Jinzhe (School of Business, Gachon University)
  • Received : 2022.04.22
  • Accepted : 2022.06.06
  • Published : 2022.06.30
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Abstract

Online reviews attract much attention because they play an essential role in consumer decision-making. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the review attributes that affect the perceived helpfulness of consumers. However, most previous studies on the helpfulness of online reviews mainly focus on quantitative factors such as review volume and reviewer attributes. Recently, some studies have investigated the impact of review content and linguistic style matching on consumers' purchase decision-making. Those studies show that consumers consider additional review attributes when evaluating reviews in decision-making. To fill the research gap with existing literature, we investigated the impact of review content and linguistic style matching on review helpfulness. Moreover, this study investigated how the reviewers' expertise moderates the effect of the review content and linguistic style matching on the review helpfulness. The empirical results show that positive affective content has a negative effect on the review helpfulness. The negative affective content and linguistic style matching positively affect review helpfulness. Review expertise relieved the impact of negative affective content and linguistic style matching on review helpfulness. According to the mechanism confirmed in this study, online e-commerce companies can achieve corporate sales growth by identifying factors affecting review helpfulness and reflecting them in their marketing strategies.

온라인 리뷰는 소비자의 구매 의사결정에 중요한 역할을 하기 때문에 소비자의 지각된 리뷰 유용성에 영향을 미치는 리뷰 요인을 확인하는 것이 필요하다. 그러나 온라인 리뷰의 유용성에 대한 대부분의 기존 연구는 주로 리뷰 및 리뷰어 속성과 같은 정량적 요인에 중점을 두고 있다. 최근 연구에서는 리뷰 콘텐츠과 언어 스타일이 소비자의 구매 의사결정에 미치는 영향을 조사했다. 또한, 소비자가 의사결정 과정에서 리뷰를 평가할 때 추가적으로 리뷰 텍스트 속성들을 고려해야 한다고 주장하고 있다. 따라서 본 연구는 온라인 리뷰 맥락에서 리뷰 콘텐츠과 언어 스타일이 리뷰 유용성에 미치는 영향을 조사하고자 한다. 추가적으로 리뷰어의 전문성이 리뷰 콘텐츠 및 언어 스타일과 리뷰 유용성 간의 영향관계를 조절하는지 여부를 조사했다. 연구결과 긍정적인 리뷰 콘텐츠는 리뷰 유용성에 부정적인 영향을 미치고, 부정적인 리뷰 콘텐츠와 언어적 스타일은 리뷰 유용성에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 리뷰어의 전문성은 부정적인 리뷰 콘텐츠와 언어 스타일이 리뷰 유용성에 미치는 영향을 완화시키는 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구결과는 온라인 전자상거래 기업이 리뷰 유용성에 영향을 미치는 요인을 파악하고 이를 마케팅 전략에 반영하여 기업 매출 성장을 달성하는데 시사점을 제공할 수 있다.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The present Research has been conducted by the Research Grant of Kwangwoon University in 2022

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