Relationship between rating scores and facial emojis in WOMs

Although the amount of word of mouth (WOM) containing emojis continues to increase daily, the relationship between emojis and consumer evaluation remains unclear. Hence, this study examined the relationship between 10 types of facial emojis and rating scores by using 42,115 pieces of data across approximately five and a half years on “Minhyo,” a Japanese WOM posting site about products and services. The data included WOM (text, emoji, rating score) of products and services from 40 industries. Pairwise comparisons using Mann-Whitney U test results revealed a clear difference in the rating scores of each emoji. Furthermore, analysis was performed by season, day of the week, and time of day. As a results, consumers’ evaluations tend to be harsher in summer than in winter, possibly because high temperatures increase hostile emotions and decrease general positive emotions. With global warming becoming more severe each year, the impact of summer temperatures cannot be overlooked. Notably, consumer evaluations tend to be higher in the morning hours (06:00–11:59) because ordinary routine experiences drain our ability to resist moral temptations, making mornings the time when we are most capable of moral thinking (i.e., morning morality effect). Unless practitioners understand these trends in consumer behavior and remove biases from the data, an accurate evaluation of WOM products and services may be impossible.