Abstract

E-commerce companies are evolving their review systems to improve review quality, including the introduction of new review templates. The current research focused on one newly developed template—the structured template—and examined its performance in generating helpful reviews relative to the free-writing template that is widely used by mainstream review systems. Drawing on the cognitive-experiential self-theory, the authors proposed a conceptual framework to elucidate how structured (vs. free-writing) templates influence reviewer behavior and subsequently, the helpfulness of their reviews, and how these effects vary across hedonic and utilitarian products. Results from three experiments involving actual review tasks demonstrated that the structured (vs. free-writing) template enhanced reviewer rational thinking, thus leading to more comprehensive and more abstract reviews. While information comprehensiveness increased review helpfulness, language abstractness decreased it. The results also indicated that product types moderated the mediation process of information comprehensiveness but not that of language abstractness. This research contributes to the online review literature and provides important implications for how to improve the design of review systems to produce helpful reviews.

About the Speaker

Dr. Lingyun Qiu is an associate professor of Department of Management Science and Information System at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. His research interest is user behavior related to information technology and information systems, including but not limited to human-computer human-intelligence interaction design, online consumer behavior, algorithmic attitudes, and decision support systems. These studies are mainly used to analyze the behavioral characteristics and psychological processes that people exhibit when using various software systems, Internet applications (e.g., e-commerce, social media, audio/video content, etc.), artificial intelligence products, and AR/VR technologies. His research not only have positive implications for companies to optimize their product design, but also can provide policy advice for the government to evaluate the overall impact of next-generation information technology, new business models and new businesses on individuals, enterprises and the society.

Dr. Qiu has published dozens of scholarly articles, which have appeared in publications both home and abroad, such as MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Association for Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, China Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Marketing Science and so on.