Abstract

Online consumer reviews can help potential buyers increase product diagnosticity and thus decrease product uncertainty. With the rapid growth of mobile and online shopping, understanding factors that influence the helpfulness of consumer reviews becomes crucial. Among other factors, review content as a main vehicle for conveying information has drawn great attention. In this study, we propose a new measure called topic diversity to estimate reviews’ information. By leveraging statistical and predictive analyses, we furnish empirical evidence to demonstrate a reliable relationship between our proposed measure and review helpfulness. Our findings suggest that topic diversity is another measure to estimate reviews’ conveying information along with the number of words. This study contributes to academia and industry, respectively. For academic researchers, the proposed measure enhances our understanding of consumer reviews’ features in association with helpfulness. Industry practitioners can use reviews’ topic diversity to recommend more helpful reviews to potential buyers.

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Topic Diversity of Online Consumer Reviews and Its Effect on Review Helpfulness

Online consumer reviews can help potential buyers increase product diagnosticity and thus decrease product uncertainty. With the rapid growth of mobile and online shopping, understanding factors that influence the helpfulness of consumer reviews becomes crucial. Among other factors, review content as a main vehicle for conveying information has drawn great attention. In this study, we propose a new measure called topic diversity to estimate reviews’ information. By leveraging statistical and predictive analyses, we furnish empirical evidence to demonstrate a reliable relationship between our proposed measure and review helpfulness. Our findings suggest that topic diversity is another measure to estimate reviews’ conveying information along with the number of words. This study contributes to academia and industry, respectively. For academic researchers, the proposed measure enhances our understanding of consumer reviews’ features in association with helpfulness. Industry practitioners can use reviews’ topic diversity to recommend more helpful reviews to potential buyers.