Effectiveness of online consumer reviews
研究评论者种族、评论效价和社会距离如何影响消费者对评论者可信度、品牌态度和购买意愿，发现三者均影响可信度，但只有评论效价影响品牌态度和购买意愿。
Abstract Purpose Extant research addressing how consumers respond to electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) remains limited. Even less attention has been devoted to examining the trustworthiness of consumer reviewers with different ethnic backgrounds. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of reviewer ethnicity, review valence and social distance (to three different ethnic groups) on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, brand attitude and purchase intention toward a product evaluated by reviewers of three ethnic backgrounds. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a 2 (review valence)×3 (reviewer ethnicity) design; 398 participants were randomly assigned to one of the six conditions. A mock product-review web page for each study condition was created to manipulate review valence and reviewer ethnicity. Findings Results show that while review valence, reviewer ethnicity and social distance each had a significant effect on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, only review valence had an influence on brand attitude and purchase intention. The interaction between reviewer ethnicity and review valence also had a significant effect on perceived reviewer trustworthiness, brand attitude and purchase intention. Originality/value The current study is the first to apply social distance theory to explain cross-cultural perception of trust, as it extends and updates the original social distance scale to broaden its empirical relevance to contemporary society via an eWOM marketing context. As social distance is a fluid and timely concept to study the diverse ethnic cultural environment, the current findings carry strong implications to future research in a wide variety of digital communication and marketing contexts, among others.