Dynamic relationship changes between reviewers and consumers in online product reviews

This research examines online product reviewers and their influence on consumers who read and endorse those posted reviews. We examine three primary research questions. First, what kinds of products will reviewers review, and how do these choices influence consumers’ endorsements (i.e., user votes) of the reviews? Second, how does the volume of reviews that a reviewer writes affect consumers’ perceptions of how helpful the reviews are? Third, if reviewers are more positive (or critical), does that influence consumers’ endorsements? This research examines not only the static effects of these multifaceted relationships but also the dynamic changes in the effect magnitudes over time. Using the time-varying effect model (TVEM) with 11 years of Yelp review data, we find that a reviewer's influence on consumers tends to increase over time as the reviewer accumulates more experience in their review writing activities. However, we find two exceptions in the monotonically increasing pattern with Product Satisfaction and Reviewer Rating Positivity, demonstrating U-shaped and inverted ∩-shaped impacts over time, respectively. We explain such results with the “expertise trap” phenomenon. Thus, our research offers new insights to platform managers and product managers in governing influential reviewers.