A Rare Species: Examining Frequent Online Review Posters and their Posting Behavior
(A2020-63092)

AUTHORS

Sabrina Gottschalk, Cass Business School, City, University of London; Alexander Mafael, Freie Universität Berlin; Jana Möller, Freie Universität Berlin

KEYWORDS

online review posting behavior; opinion minority; identity relevance

ABSTRACT

Online reviews are available in large quantities and for a wide range of products and services. Interestingly, most of this review content is produced by a small group of active review posters, who voice their opinion frequently. Despite their dominant role in the generation of new reviews, frequent review posters and their behavior are not well understood. We propose that frequent posters favour review settings, in which their opinion belongs to the minority of previously posted ratings. This behavior sets them apart from other, less frequent posters, who seem to shy away from posting in a minority perspective and prefer majority settings. Frequent posters reported lower social risk perceptions and increased posting intention when they perceived their opinion to be in the minority. This effect was conditional on identity-relevance of the product domain. We add to literature on review posting behavior by shedding light on important individual differences between reviewers.