Journal Article

When Seeing Helps Believing: The Interactive Effects of Previews and Reviews on E-Book Purchases

Moon, Jae Yun, Yim, Dobin, Oh, Wonseok, Choi, Angela Aerry, Cho, Daegon

2019

Overview

For many products, particularly digital content, consumers base purchase-related decisions on not only others’ evaluations (e.g., online reviews) but also their own direct experiences (e.g., previews). Many of them therefore combine “seeing” through their own encounters with “believing” the assessments of others, often being confronted with a situation wherein the former contradicts the latter. This study investigates the dynamics underlying the interactive relationships between online reviews and previews to shed light on how consumers collectively use these pre-buying resources as guidance in purchasing e-books. Our research reveals that consumers wisely leverage previews in accordance with the characteristics of reviews (e.g., volume, valence, and variance). The positive effects of previews increase with decreasing review volume and average valence. Consumers also rely heavily on previews in situations wherein a high variance exists among the indirect evaluations of reviewers. We detect the presence of order effects with respect to exposure to previews and reviews; exposure to previews after accessing reviews more effectively drives sales than when exposure to reviews precedes the encounters. These results provide content providers with useful managerial insights into how they can maximize consumers’ overall prepurchase experiences and enhance content sales through the excellent leveraging of previews and reviews. Online reviews offer consumers the indirect experience of products through others’ consumption evaluations, whereas previews afford them direct experience through product trials. Although conceptual and empirical studies on the business ramifications of online reviews abound, little is known about how online previews moderate the effects of online reviews on sales. To cast light on this issue, the current research investigated the interactive effects of exposure to online previews and reviews on individual purchase decisions. We analyzed a unique two-month panel data set on 270,260 sessions that comprise clickstream data on consumers’ exposure to previews and reviews and data on their subsequent purchase behaviors. On the basis of analyses underlain by a two-stage hierarchical Bayesian framework, we found that online previews positively influence individual purchase decisions. More importantly, significant interactions exist between previews and reviews, as evidenced by the decreasing positive effect of previews with increasing review volume and average review rating. In addition, previews can complement reviews when a high variance in the latter renders purchase decisions difficult. We further examined the sequence effect of exposure to previews and reviews and discovered that exposure to previews following the experience of reviews may exert a considerable positive influence on individual purchase decisions. The results from an additional field experiment and a text-based sentiment analysis reinforced the validity of our main findings by mitigating concerns regarding the endogeneity and the accuracy of the review quality, respectively. The findings provide practical implications with regard to the design of optimal strategies for releasing preview information to digital platforms.

• Publisher: INFORMS,Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
• Subject: construal level theory / Consumer attitudes / Consumers / Consumption / Data mining / Decision analysis / E-books / econometric analyses / Electronic commerce / Electronic publishing / Empirical analysis / Exposure / field experiment / Information services / Marketing research / Online information services / online previews / online reviews / Online services