Abstract:

If new products want to survive in the market, comments and recommendations from earlier adopters are significantly important. Past researchers have shown that people tend to weigh negative information more than positive information during the evaluation process. Product type moderates the effect of review valence on online review usefulness, and readers exhibit a negative bias for utilitarian product reviews only. In addition, regulatory focus theory distinguishes between a promotion focus and a prevention focus. Past researchers have shown that promotion-focused individuals view positive information more important while prevention-focused individuals view negative information more important, and promotion-focused individuals tend to buy more high-technology goods and newly launched purchased items. Thus, what kind of influence will regulatory focus put on review usefulness of incremental innovative products and radical innovative products? We investigate the research questions through two laboratory experiments. Experiment 1 is a 2 (new product type: radical vs. incremental) × 2 (review valence: positive vs. negative) between-subject design, which is to explore the influence of review valence and new product innovativeness on the effect of review usefulness. Experiment 2 is a 2 (new product type: radical vs. incremental) × 2 (review valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (Regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) between-subject design, which is to explore the influence of review valence, new product innovativeness and regulatory focus on the effect of review usefulness. Data were collected from 360 graduate students (160 in Experiment 1 and 200 in Experiment 2). Results of the studies indicate that: The impact of new product type and review valence on review usefulness exists an interaction, and compared with the incremental new products, the usefulness of negative reviews on radical new products are higher, while there is no significant difference between the usefulness of positive reviews on different types of new products. Regulatory focus mediates the effect of review valence on review usefulness, and promotion-focused individuals process the usefulness of positive and negative reviews similar, while prevention-focused individuals consider negative reviews more useful than positive ones. The impact of new product type and review valence on review usefulness show different patterns between individuals with different types of regulatory focus. For promotion-focused individuals, new product type mediates the effect of review valence on review usefulness. However, for prevention-focused individuals, no such moderating effect exists. This paper brings new insight to the field of product review usefulness by incorporating a perspective of incremental new products and radical new products. Regulatory focus theory is introduced to this research, which also extend the externality of this theory. Also, some theoretical and practical contributions are made to the new product marketing strategy.

Key words: perceived online review usefulness, review valence, product innovativeness, new product type, regulatory focus