Impacts of Emoticons, Review Valence, and Format on Review Persuasiveness

• Main Authors: Guei-Hua Huang, 黃桂花
• Other Authors: Chun-Tuan Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5sf5ah

博士 === 國立中山大學 === 企業管理學系研究所 === 107 === Emoticons, the pictorial face-like icons, have become a common and easy-to-use tool for online users to express ideas or add feelings to text-based communications where social cues are missing. Emoticons have been widely used in online reviews. This research aims to investigate how emoticons in online reviews influence review persuasiveness, while considering the roles of review valence and review format. Two laboratory experiments, one eye-tracking experiment, and an empirical data analysis in field settings reveal that emoticons increase review persuasiveness in positive reviews but decrease review persuasiveness in negative reviews. Furthermore, the results indicate that such effects hold for narrative-based reviews, but show the opposite when the reviews are list-based. Processing fluency is found to be the mechanism underlying these effects. The findings offer theoretical contributions to literature relating to online reviews and information processing. Practical implications for online marketers and consumers are also provided.