Characterizing bipolar rating scales to investigate potency of eWOM messages involving attitude directionwithout its strength

Abstract

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is an important information source that influences consumer product evaluations. The author previously developed a computational model, called an inference space model, that predicts potency-magnitude relations of eWOM messages involving subjective rank expressions, which refer to the linguistic representations related to the attitude-levels of the benefits of product attributes. This paper mathematically investigates the potencymagnitude relations of message types differentiating the attitude direction and the strength. The investigations include the developments of a Q-magnitude Relation Map (Q-Map) which illustrates how the relations change based on the values of two parameters: evaluation target size and scale-size balancing indicator. The results show that three scale-classes of bipolar rating scales have a critical role in knowing how the relations change. Based on observations of the Q-Maps, unexplored hypotheses on the potency-magnitude relations are developed with respect to messages involving attitude direction without its strength.