Decide Now or Later: Making Sense of Incoherence Across Online Reviews

Mixed or inconsistent opinions are commonplace in online reviews. Prior research shows that review inconsistency has different effects: its product-level manifestation in the form of inconsistent product ratings is associated with poorer sales, but its review-level manifestation in the form of two-sided arguments is associated with greater helpfulness and credibility evaluations of the review. In practice, consumers rarely consult all reviews or just a single review before they make purchase decisions. Instead, they often read a set of featured reviews (i.e., a review set) and some additional reviews if needed. Focusing on inconsistency in a review set, we introduce a new type of inconsistency across reviews that does not exist within a single review or at the level of product ratings: cross-review incoherence, which refers to disagreement among reviewers about specific product features. Based on cognitive dissonance theory, we explore how and when cross-review incoherence influences helpfulness and credibility judgments of the review set, revealing that consumers’ reactions to such incoherence might operate differently beyond an individual review. In addition, we examine how and why consumers’ judgments of a review set influence their purchase deferral—that is, the likelihood of making a buy-or-not-buy decision immediately after consulting the top reviews or deferring it until after obtaining more information. Two laboratory experiments demonstrate that cross-review incoherence increases purchase deferral via more negative evaluations of the review set that, in turn, reduce attitude certainty. In addition, the negative effect of cross-review incoherence on review set evaluations is weaker when the reviewers provide more contextual information behind their opinions. These findings deepen our understanding of inconsistency across multiple pieces of information; reveal the consequences of review evaluations during an understudied stage of consumers’ decision-making process; and provide critical implications for review platforms, companies, and reviewers.