The Effects of Abstract vs. Concrete Mindsets on the Persuasiveness of Online Reviews: A Construal Level Perspective

Abstract

Online reviews and recommendations play a major role in consumers’ decision making. Prior research shows that consumers are heavily influenced by the visible opinions of others when they decide whether to buy a product or not (Babic Rosario et al., 2016). However, less is known about the role of different review sources and message types: Do sources that are similar to the consumers (e.g., reviewers with the same age) always have a stronger influence or are there circumstances under which people are also more open toward information from dissimilar sources (that may provide more novel information)? How does the type of arguments in the review (e.g., whether they focus on details or “the big picture”) affect the persuasiveness of the review? Prior work on these moderating variables of review influence provided mixed results (e.g., Brandes et al., 2011; Lin and Xu, 2017).