Consumer+Skepticism

__**CONSUMER SKEPTICISM AND ONLINE REVIEWS: AN ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL PERSPECTIVE **__ **by Brianna Dotson ** With the declining trust in advertising, Word of Mouth (WOM) has become the most influential communication channel. Polls are taken online and are considered a form of WOM and many results were positive. The consumer reviews on product or company are one of the best predictors of business growth. Still, little is known about how online messages influence the purchasing intention of consumers. The first purpose of the study was to understand effects of online reviews. By introducing the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to this case, this study contributes to research in online behavior. A free market encourages exaggerations in marketing messages which causes consumers to become skeptical in whether or not the product is trustworthy. Through communication with friends and personal experiences with the products, consumers start to have an opinion on their credibility and begin to know what they want and do not want to purchase. In a study, Calfee and Ringold found that the majority of consumers believe that advertising is often untrustworthy and accordingly discount claims made by advertisements. Online reviews provide easy access to information about the products that are in the market, and end up causing more skepticism even if the reviews are positive. The fact that this new form of WOM is information from strangers whom the consumers have never met, and probably never will meet, casts doubt on the trustworthiness of these online messages. Therefore, considerable criticism has been directed at Internet information, especially online reviews. It is suggested that many online surfers might get paid to give certain products positive reviews and stray away from discussing defaults.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model provides a useful framework for understanding the effectiveness of persuasive communication and it can be inferred that attitude change may occur through routes of influence. This influence causes the consumer to either feel like they can trust in the source or to become skeptical. Skepticism is when consumers come to believe or disbelieve marketing messages through socialization and purchasing experiences. Although the Internet provides easy access to information about products and services, it may foster consumer skepticism. Consumer skepticism reflects a marketplace belief held by a consumer. When entering a familiar marketplace, a consumer already has been influenced by outside forces, if from the Internet or televisions commercials for example, and know what is good or bad for their specific situation. When making taking a route of influence, you can either take the central route or the peripheral route. Individuals taking the central route think critically and scrutinize the credibility and relevance of those arguments before forming an attitude about the advertisement or product. Conversely, individuals taking the peripheral route make less cognitive effort and rely on shortcuts such as the number of arguments and physical attractiveness of the product.

A test was conducted to see how consumers react to online reviews and were separated by high and low skepticism. The test predicted that high skepticism subjects do not take the central route in formulating purchasing intention and the peripheral when the consumer had low skepticism. The ELM would have predicted that people with high skepticism shopping online would take the central route in attitude change. Consumers with high skepticism had a tendency to disbelieve certain categories of product information without considering the source credibility, argument quality or number of arguments. It shows that highly skeptical consumers may be impossible to persuade since they are unlikely to believe anything reviews that they read on the Internet. This finding contributes to the ELM research literature by considering a potentially important personality factor in the ELM framework.

Low skepticism consumers tend to adopt the peripheral route in forming attitudes in an online context. These peoples are more easily persuaded by quantity of online reviews since more reviews are perceived as indicating greater product popularity. They tend to use more of the “common sense” angle – if a product gets many reviews and they are mostly positive then why not buy the product? Less skeptical consumers are prone to be persuaded by peripheral cues such as source credibility and number of arguments. This finding contributes to a better understanding of the mechanism underpinning the effect of online reviews. Moreover, knowledge of the consumers’ level of skepticism can guide the Internet marketers and software developers and help them to design material that will influence online shoppers effectively. Sher, Peter J., and Sheng-Hsien Lee. "CONSUMER SKEPTICISM AND ONLINE REVIEWS: AN ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL PERSPECTIVE." // Social Behavior & Personality // 37 (2009): 137-44. Print. []