Understanding online review helpfulness in omnichannel retailing

As retailers have increasingly embraced an omnichannel retailing strategy, explaining and predicting the helpfulness of online review should consider both online-based and offline-based reviews. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Based on the signaling theory, this study intends to examine the impacts of review-related and reviewer-related signals on review helpfulness in the context of omnichannel retailing. The proposed research model and corresponding hypotheses were tested by using negative binomial regression.

The results shown that both review-related (review rating and review sentiment strength) and reviewer-related (reviewer real name and reviewer expertise) signals positively affect review helpfulness. Contrary to the authors’ expectations, review length negatively affects review helpfulness. Specifically, when the review submitted from an omnichannel retailer’s offline channel, the positive impacts of reviewer real name on review helpfulness will be stronger, and the positive impacts of reviewer expertise on review helpfulness will be weaker.

Unlike many previous studies tend to explore the antecedents of review helpfulness in a single-channel setting, the study examined the factors that affect review helpfulness in an omnichannel retailing context.