Photos in Online Reviews of Search Goods
(A2023-114463)

AUTHORS

Jessica Knauß, Wiesbaden Business School, Hochschule RheinMain; Mark Elsner, Wiesbaden Business School

ABSTRACT

Online reviews allow consumers to evaluate products and services before making a purchase. They can contain both written and visual user-generated content. While researchers demonstrated that consumers benefit from photos added to online reviews of experience goods, far too little attention has been paid to search goods. More precisely, only one study investigated the effect of photos by examining reviews from American Amazon.com. However, due to cultural differences between American and German society, we assume that their results cannot be generalized to the German population. This study, therefore, investigates to what extent German consumers value photos in online reviews of search goods. In doing so, we conducted an online experiment among 503 German participants. The results of a two-sample t-test and regression analysis support our assumption. This study contributes to research in the field of digital marketing and provides implications for practitioners.