Concrete but Less Helpful? Understanding the Impact of Content Concreteness and Two-sidedness on Review Helpfulness

This research investigates how and why content concreteness influences consumers’ helpfulness evaluation of online reviews. Drawing on the linguistic concreteness, processing fluency, and emotional dissonance literature, we hypothesized that content concreteness impacts review helpfulness through two competitive mechanisms (i.e., perceived objectivity and processing fluency) and these effects vary across one-sidedness versus two-sidedness reviews. The results of an empirical study, a lab experiment, and an eye-tracking experiment provide stringent evidence supporting our proposed hypotheses. The current research findings challenge the previous view on the positive effect of content concreteness, take new insights into the underlying mechanisms, and explore the potential boundary conditions in the context of online product reviews.