Online Venting: The Impact of Temporal Proximity Cues and Emotionality on Perceptions of Negative Online Review Value

Abstract

Because negative reviews have the potential to dissuade consumers, brands necessarily worry about them. Prior literature generally supports the notion that negative information offers greater value to and influences consumers more powerfully, yet in specific circumstances, negative online reviews might be less helpful and influential. As the current research establishes, when negative reviews exhibit near (vs. far) temporal proximity cues, relative to a reviewed experience with a product or service, and some degree of negative emotionality, consumers tend to discount them in their decision-making. Such outcomes seemingly arise because consumers identify a negative review that combines near temporal proximity (i.e., posted or written in a way that makes the experience feel temporally close) with negative emotionality as a form of “venting.” They then ascribe the information in the negative review to reviewer-related attributes rather than to relevant product or service quality attributes. Consistent evidence for this venting discount effect emerges from analyses of actual hotel reviews from Tripadvisor as well as multiple experimental studies involving both products and services.