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Marketing Letters

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25-03-2022

Coordinating supply-related scarcity appeals with online reviews

Authors: Elika Kordrostami, Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Vahid Rahmani

Published in: Marketing Letters | Issue 3/2022

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Abstract

Online reviews play an important role in consumer purchase decisions and have received much research attention. However, previous research has typically examined the effects of online review characteristics independent of firm marketing messages. We argue that how much average review rating influences consumers’ decisions depends on the presence of a scarcity appeal and its congruence with review volume information. Through a lab experiment and analyses of real-world data from Amazon.com, we show that claiming a product to have limited supply moves consumers toward more heuristic processing but only when review volume is consistent with the scarcity information. In contrast, when review volume is incongruent with the supply-based scarcity message, the incongruence prompts consumers to process information more carefully and reduces their reliance on review valence.

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Title: Coordinating supply-related scarcity appeals with online reviews
Authors: Elika Kordrostami
Yuping Liu-Thompkins
Vahid Rahmani
Publication date: 25-03-2022
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Marketing Letters / Issue 3/2022
Print ISSN: 0923-0645
Electronic ISSN: 1573-059X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-022-09625-8

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