Examining the Impact of Review Tag Function on Product Evaluation and Information Perception of Popular Products

Abstract

Since online reviews have become an increasingly important information source for consumers to evaluate products during online shopping, many platforms started to adopt review mechanisms to maximize the value of such massive reviews. In recent years, the review tag function has been adopted in practices and leading the research of sentiment and opinion extraction techniques. However, the examination of its impact has been largely overlooked. In this paper, by proposing a framework through the lens of attribution theory, we look into the effect of the review tag function on two focal outcomes. One is the evaluation of highly-rated popular products, the other is the helpfulness perception of product reviews. Experimental methods and qualitative analysis were utilized to test our hypotheses. Our findings demonstrate the importance of tag function application as it further increases consumers’ product evaluation for popular products. We also found that different tag function appearances influence consumers’ cognitive biases in review helpfulness perception.