The impact of online user-generated hotel reviews on attitude.

Abstract

Online reviews are often consulted when making a purchase decision, especially in the hospitality industry. Studies have been conducted to show the effect of written reviews on purchase decision, but little is known about the impact of other forms of reviews – such as video reviews – on purchase decision. Consequently there is also little information regarding the extent of the effect these reviews have on attitude. Therefore to fill this void, we conducted a research to investigate and compare the impact of these different forms of reviews on hotel attitude. An experimental study (N=197) that includes review valence (positive vs. negative reviews), review format (written vs. video reviews) and review order (written review first vs. video review first) as independent factors shows that written reviews do have a stronger effect on attitude as compared to video reviews. Additionally when exposed to reviews, a Recency Effect comes into play whereby viewers tend to be more affected by later reviews. Lastly our study also shows that positive review has a stronger impact than negative review.