earticle

영어

Online reviews provide an increasingly important role in the purchase decision making. Many customers prefer to explore helpful reviews in order to diminish their searching effort such as time effort. This paper examines the differential effects of three discrete emotions (anger, fear, sadness) embedded in a customer review on the perceived review helpfulness. We analyze “verified purchase” reviews from Amazon.com to examine the relationship between emotions and review helpfulness. The findings of this study extend previous research by suggesting that product type moderates the effects of emotions on the helpfulness of the review. Anger embedded in a customer review has a greater negative on the perceived review helpfulness for experience goods than for search goods. Fear and sadness are found to have a positive and negative effect on the perceived review helpfulness respectively, which shows no difference between search goods and experience goods. The implications of these findings contribute to a better understanding of the important role of emotions embedded in reviews on the perceived review helpfulness. The findings also provide practical insights (i.e., the presentation of online reviews) for the retailers or review platforms, and give suggestions for the consumers on how to select and write a helpful review.