The mechanism of positive emotions linking consumer review consistency to brand attitudes: A moderated mediation analysis

As consumers read multiple reviews, so consumer review consistency is important. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of consumer review consistency in influencing attitudes toward brands by examining its underlying effect on consumers’ emotions after they read consistent consumer reviews. In addition, the moderation effect of hedonic and utilitarian purchase values on positive consumer emotions and attitudes toward brands is explored.

This study used a quantitative design in which 329 participants – undergraduate and MBA students at a university in Taiwan – were asked to complete online questionnaires. To generalize the results, the questions in the questionnaire were based on any consumer reviews that the participants had recently browsed.

Consumer review consistency positively influences attitudes toward brands. Positive emotions are also developed when reading consistent consumer reviews, and this positively influences consumers’ attitudes toward brands. However, positive emotions are not derived from consistent consumer reviews in all contexts. The results show that positive emotions work well when consumers shop using hedonic value. Positive emotions create positive consumers’ attitudes toward a brand when they shop using hedonic value, but this significant effect does not occur when consumers shop using utilitarian value.

This study’s results suggest that only investigating the quality of a consumer review or other aspects of a single review might overlook the impact of consumer review consistency, as consumers read multiple reviews. Consumer review consistency plays an important role in brand effectiveness, as consumers form positive attitudes toward brands when they read consistent reviews. Positive emotions can strengthen consumers’ attitudes toward a brand. Moreover, positive emotions increase positive attitudes toward brands only when consumers shop using hedonic value. However, positive emotions do not enhance consumers’ attitudes if they shop using utilitarian value.

Rather than focusing on the quality of a single review, online shops should carefully consider consumer review consistency. Although positive reviews are better than negative reviews, it is quite difficult for every shop to maintain 100 percent positive reviews. Therefore, maintaining and offering quality products and services are rather important to acquiring more positive reviews. Online shops should consider experimental marketing strategies when managing online shops. The layout of online sites that show consistent consumer reviews can provide consumers with cues that shorten decision making, especially for products that consumers tend to shop for using hedonic value.

This research extends the previous consumer review literature. Previous research was focused mainly on the quality of consumer reviews or other aspects of a single review. This research shows that focusing a single consumer review is not sufficient, as consumers generally read more than one consumer review. In addition, the role of positive emotions as a mediator between consumer review consistency and attitudes toward a brand was investigated. Furthermore, the moderated mediation effect was applied to investigate the role of shopping value (hedonic vs utilitarian value) as a moderator of positive emotions’ mediation effect.