Cross-Review Incoherence and Purchase Deferral

Presenter Information

Dezhi Yin, University of South FloridaFollow
Triparna de Vreede, University of South FloridaFollow
Logan Macray Steele, University of South FloridaFollow
Gert-Jan de Vreede, University of South FloridaFollow

Paper Number

1047

Paper Type

Completed

Description

This paper focuses on inconsistency among a set of reviews and explores how, why, and when the presence of cross-review incoherence influences consumers’ purchase deferral—their likelihood of making a “buy/not buy” decision immediately after consulting the reviews or deferring it until after obtaining more information. Based on the cognitive dissonance theory, we hypothesize that (a) the presence of cross-review incoherence or attribute-level contradictions among a set of reviews leads to lower certainty in consumer attitudes and a higher likelihood of purchase deferral, (b) this effect transpires through consumers’ helpfulness and credibility evaluations of the review set, and (c) the effect of cross-review incoherence on review set evaluations is weakened when the specificity of the context behind reviewers’ opinions is high. We conducted two experiments and found support for these predictions.

Comments

22-Digital

Recommended Citation

Yin, Dezhi; de Vreede, Triparna; Steele, Logan Macray; and de Vreede, Gert-Jan, "Cross-Review Incoherence and Purchase Deferral" (2021). ICIS 2021 Proceedings. 2.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2021/digital_commerce/digital_commerce/2