Decisions based on ratings, reviews, and recommendations - the cognitive processing of online information

Abstract

The Internet allows consumers to find different kinds of information about products or services before a purchase. For instance, there is objective information provided by the platform or marketer, as well as different subjective opinions and several forms of ratings generated by users who already bought the product. This cumulative doctoral dissertation aims at depicting the cognitive process that consumers go through when choosing a product while using Internet information. More precisely, this thesis will focus on Internet platforms that contain objective and subjective information to facilitate consumer’s decision-making (i.e. review websites). In order to do this, the decision-making model of Schiebener and Brand (2015) is taken as a theoretical reference. This model is characterized for understanding decision making as a process carried out by two systems that interact constantly. Thus, the reflective system, which is rational and calculative interacts with the impulsive system, which is based on emotional reactions and somatic activity in order to evaluate the options that lead to a decision. Based on this assumption, this thesis integrates the results of three empirical articles. Article 1 uses a Choice-Based Conjoint analysis to identify which type of information provided on review websites is more relevant for consumers and how executive functions are related to the preference for objective or subjective information. The results showed that participants preferred subjective information, such as reviews and ratings, and also that cognitive flexibility and categorization are cognitive abilities related to the preference for objective information. Article 2 used a Judge-Advisor System to measure the influence of both types of information on the final decision. In this study, participants correctly assessed which products were more advantageous based only on objective information. Furthermore, it was found that user recommendations are highly influential for consumers, especially when these come from a high number of users. Article 3 used an experimental design to investigate how Internet cues and the writing style influence consumers’ purchase intention and their perceived trustworthiness of online reviews. The results showed that factual online reviews were perceived as more trustworthy, less fake and entail a higher purchase intention when compared to an emotional writing style. The results of the three articles are supported by literature using other dual-system approaches, such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model. Hence, these results and the subsequent discussions on a meta-level about the role of online descriptions, social influence, and decision confidence; contribute to the development of a theoretical model, based on Schiebener and Brand (2015), which explains how consumers process different types of online information in order to make purchase decisions.