The Selling Power of Customer-Generated Product Reviews: the Matching Effect Between Consumers’ Cognitive Needs and Persuasive Message Types

A 2007 survey reported that one in three Internet users make purchase decisions influenced by sites with social contents (Wasserman 2007), social networking websites such as Facebook.com. Although Amazon.com is not a typical social networking website, like Facebook.com, Amazon.com meets the definition of a “social networking location” by letting their customers post reviews and ratings, and thus falls into the categories of online feedback system, recognized by Yang and Peterson (2003). Shoppers on the Amazon.com not only search for products that appeal to their needs, but also consume those consumer-generated product reviews (CGPR) as well as the ratings of those products. The current research examines the persuasiveness of consumer-generated product reviews based on the matching effects between the types of the persuasive messages (Transformational or Informational) and individuals’ information processing styles. The paper refines the scale of Need for Cognition (Petty, Caccioppo, and Kao 1984), emphasizes importance in understanding the selling power of vast consumer-generated product reviews, and extends the scope of e-word-of-mouth (e-WOM) research by recognizing the persuasive function of customer-generated product reviews on retailing websites.