What Makes Online Review Videos Helpful? Evidence from Product Review Videos on Youtube

Abstract

With the rapid growth and popularity of YouTube, an increasing number of consumers rely on online product review videos to obtain product-related information. Review videos, with visual and sound cues, can convey product experiences in rich and immersive ways and have a powerful impact on consumer’s perceptions and intentions to purchase the product. As the provision of online review videos grows and consumers increasingly rely on them for their purchase decisions, understanding factors that contribute to the perceived helpfulness of video reviews becomes critical for video review management. This paper examines how various video content characteristics—information accessibility, positivity, and subjectivity—and voice characteristics of reviewers—speech rate, pitch, and speech dynamics—are associated with the perceived helpfulness. We collect detailed data on 14,486 electronic product review videos posted on YouTube and employ speech recognition and natural language processing techniques to extract sentimental and speech characteristics. We find that video viewers perceive online product review videos that are more information-accessible, more positive, and less subjective as more helpful. In addition, review videos created by reviewers with faster speech rates, lower voice pitch, and more vocal dynamicity are perceived as more helpful. We additionally find that reviewers’ popularity can moderate the effect of information accessibility, positivity, and reviewers’ voice characteristics on perceived review helpfulness.