TY - JOUR
T1 - The paradox of (dis)trust in sponsorship disclosure
T2 - The characteristics and effects of sponsored online consumer reviews
AU - Kim, Su Jung
AU - Maslowska, Ewa
AU - Tamaddoni, Ali
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the Spiegel Digital & Database Research Center at Northwestern University for making the data available for the first part of this study. They also thank participants at the 2018 EMAC conference in Glasgow for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2019/1
Y1 - 2019/1
N2 - Online consumer reviews (OCRs) have become one of the most influential persuasive messages with respect to purchase decisions. Knowing this, marketers have started incentivizing consumers to write reviews, hoping that they can increase the volume of positive reviews. However, little research exists on the content characteristics and effects of sponsored OCRs. This paper examines the different characteristics and effects of sponsored and organic OCRs, and the mechanisms by which consumers recognize and process these two types of reviews, using mixed methods in two studies. The findings of a text mining analysis (Study 1) suggest that sponsored reviews provide more elaborate and evaluative content; however, they are perceived as less helpful than organic reviews. The findings of a randomized experiment (Study 2) suggest that sponsorship disclosure increases suspicions about the reviewer's ulterior motives and decreases consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions when a review is positive. Sponsorship disclosure does not hurt attitudes or purchase intentions when a review is negative.
AB - Online consumer reviews (OCRs) have become one of the most influential persuasive messages with respect to purchase decisions. Knowing this, marketers have started incentivizing consumers to write reviews, hoping that they can increase the volume of positive reviews. However, little research exists on the content characteristics and effects of sponsored OCRs. This paper examines the different characteristics and effects of sponsored and organic OCRs, and the mechanisms by which consumers recognize and process these two types of reviews, using mixed methods in two studies. The findings of a text mining analysis (Study 1) suggest that sponsored reviews provide more elaborate and evaluative content; however, they are perceived as less helpful than organic reviews. The findings of a randomized experiment (Study 2) suggest that sponsorship disclosure increases suspicions about the reviewer's ulterior motives and decreases consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions when a review is positive. Sponsorship disclosure does not hurt attitudes or purchase intentions when a review is negative.
KW - Attitude
KW - eWOM
KW - Online consumer reviews
KW - Persuasion knowledge
KW - Purchase intention
KW - Sponsorship disclosure
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056300972&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85056300972&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.dss.2018.10.014
DO - 10.1016/j.dss.2018.10.014
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85056300972
SN - 0167-9236
VL - 116
SP - 114
EP - 124
JO - Decision Support Systems
JF - Decision Support Systems
ER -