Testing the intermediary effect of product involvement on the influence of online book review: a case study of mystery readers
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Li, Pei-Ning
Abstract
The judgment of readings for leisure inevitably involves certain degree of uncertainty as it is difficult to determine the quality of a work before its consumption. Potential readers often have to rely on decision cues such as reviews and word of mouths for judgment. The influence of reviews is arguably more salient for readers who have a less degree of involvement with a certain genre of leisure reading. The study set out to explore the influence of genre readers’ degree of involvement on their preference stability. To test our hypothesis that highly involved readers has a more stable preference, an experiment was conducted where 41 high and low involvement readers in fantasy novels were exposed to online book reviews opposite to their own. Preference stability was then measured by the extent to which the participants’ opinions of a set of eight previously unknown titles vary before and after they were exposed to contradictory reviews. Major findings are as following: firstly, high involvement readers had a higher degree of preference stability; secondly, negative reviews had a more significant impact on readers’ judgment. Furthermore, it was also found that readers with high and low involvement relied on different decision cues for judgment; while highly involved readers relied more on introductory texts and editorial reviews, readers with low involvement tended to rely heavily on star rating, which demands less cognitive effort.
Subjects
involvement
preference stability
book review
Type
thesis
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