The Mode Heuristic in Service Consumers’ Interpretations of Online Rating Distributions
研究发现消费者在解读在线评分分布图时，会因众数（最高柱）的视觉显著性而过度依赖它，导致服务评价随众数位置系统变化。八项实验证实了众数启发式的存在及其机制，为企业监控和评估评论数据提供了新指标。
In this article, the authors demonstrate a tendency among consumers to use the arithmetic mode as a heuristic basis when drawing inferences from graphical displays of online rating distributions in such a way that service evaluations inferred from rating distributions systematically vary by the location of the mode. The rationale underlying this phenomenon is that the mode (i.e., the most frequent rating which is represented by the tallest bar in a graphical display) attracts consumers’ attention because of its visual salience and is thus disproportionately weighted when they draw conclusions. Across a series of eight studies, the authors provide strong empirical evidence for the existence of the mode heuristic, shed light on this phenomenon at the process level, and demonstrate how consumers’ inferences based on the mode heuristic depend on the visual salience of the mode. Together, the findings of these studies contribute to a better understanding of how service customers process and interpret graphical illustrations of online rating distributions and provide companies with a new key figure that—aside from rating volume, average ratings, and rating dispersion—should be incorporated in the monitoring, analyzing, and evaluating of review data.