An Investigation of Potency of eWOM Messages with a Focus on Subjective Rank Expressions

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is one important information source that influences consumers' product evaluations. This paper presents(1) hypotheses for the potency of eWOM messages with a focus on subjective rank expressions, which refer to linguistic representations related to the level of subjective evaluations and the strength of recommendations, and (2) the results of hypothesis testing on the dataset collected from a questionnaire survey administered to one hundred and fifty two undergraduate students. Two expression types of subjective rank expressions - comparison and degree - we reexamined. A two-way ANOVA was performed to test the effects of two independent variables "evaluation skill" (SKILL) and "expressiontype" (TYPE) on the dependent variable "degree of positive change in the evaluations" (POTENCY). The results provide some pieces of evidence in support of the hypotheses. The findings obtained through the research are discussed from a viewpoint of developing accurate methods for the potency prediction of eWOM messages.