Abstract
Image reviews can directly indicate socioeconomic status (SES) of reviewers, which is completely different from text reviews. However, image reviews are under the way to be deeply explored the effect of reviewers' SES disclosures on customer purchase intention. This research uses experimental method to examine social status effect of reviewers in different consumption settings and the underlying mechanism. The findings demonstrate that SES disclosure of reviewers has a significant influence on customers' purchase intentions, indicating that participants have higher purchase intention when they perceive that the products are recommended by high SES reviewers than by low SES reviewers. However, the social status effect occurs when the product is consumed in public but does not occur when the product is consumed in private. This research also finds that participants with high self-presentation concerns would be significantly influenced by reviewers' SES when a product is consumed in public, but participants with low self-presentation concern would not be influenced.
Highlights
The findings demonstrate that socioeconomic status (SES) disclosure of reviewers has a significant influence on customers’ purchase intentions, indicating that participants have higher purchase intention when they perceive that the products are recommended by high SES reviewers than by low SES reviewers
Online reviews have become an important product information source for consumers as they make final purchase decision; online reviews are considered to be an indispensable tool for online vendors to promote their products (Pan & Zhang, 2011; Khare et al, 2011)
The results show that the main effect of a reviewer SES is significant on customers’ purchase intention (F(1,192) = 68.658, p < 0.001), indicating that participants have a higher purchase intention when they perceive the products recommended by high SES reviewers rather than by low SES reviewers (Mhigh = 4.63 versus Mlow = 3.61,t(194) = 7.353, p < 0.001)
Summary
Online reviews have become an important product information source for consumers as they make final purchase decision; online reviews are considered to be an indispensable tool for online vendors to promote their products (Pan & Zhang, 2011; Khare et al, 2011). For the benefits of buyers and vendors, most shopping websites across the globe have been constantly developing their review systems to improve consumers’ shopping experiences (Srinivasan et al, 2002), to help them make better purchase decisions, and to increase vendors’ sales (Chen et al, 2011). Image reviews, a form of online reviews, are becoming more common in review systems for most leading shopping websites, such as Amazon.com and Taobao.com. By using customer image reviews, online vendors want to attract more potential customers and improve their own profitability. Image reviews present product pictures that customers take personally, even customers’ selfies with the products. Image reviews often disclose actual customers’ social status information unintentionally.
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