Visual Presentation Modes in Online Product Reviews and Their Effects on Consumer Responses

Online product reviews posted by consumers are becoming a staple part of e-commerce websites. Researchers demonstrate that the volume and strength of online reviews, among others, have a significant impact on consumer responses. These studies have focused on the effect of text-based online reviews, but current information technologies enable the posting of online reviews with higher visual content, such as with images and videos. Using the elaboration likelihood model and the dual coding theory, we examine the effects of three visual modes for presenting online reviews with three products – backpack, digital camera and video game. Our results indicate that video-based online reviews are perceived as being more credible, helpful, persuasive, and providing a great sense of involvement, compared to text-based and image-based online reviews, but with no significant differences among the latter two. The influence of presentation modes on consumer responses is partially moderated by product type.