Factors Affecting Review Helpfulness:

Abstract

Many review sites, such as Amazon.com and TripAdvisor, have a “helpful” button that allows people to cast their votes on the helpfulness of a review. Marketing, consumer behavior, and information systems scholars have extensively examined review, reviewer, and product characteristics that affect review helpfulness, i.e., the number or ratio of helpful votes that a review received. This article provides a narrative review (qualitative review) and a meta-analysis (quantitative review) of the literature on factors affecting review helpfulness. The results show that text length and disclosure of reviewers’ profile photos are positively associated with review helpfulness. In contrast, prior studies had mixed results on the effects of review ratings (number of stars) and disclosure of reviewers’ names and addresses. This study suggests that examining readers’ decision-making about helpful voting can resolve these mixed results.

Keywords

• review helpfulness
• helpful button
• narrative review
• meta-analysis