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What Happens in Vegas Stays on TripAdvisor? A Theory and Technique to Understand Narrativity in Consumer Reviews

Author

Listed:
  • Tom van Laer
  • Jennifer Edson Escalas
  • Stephan Ludwig
  • Ellis A van den Hende
  • Gita V Johar
  • J Jeffrey Inman
  • Paul M Herr

Abstract

Many consumers base their purchase decisions on online consumer reviews. An overlooked feature of these texts is their narrativity: the extent to which they tell a story. The authors construct a new theory of narrativity to link the narrative content and discourse of consumer reviews to consumer behavior. They also develop from scratch a computerized technique that reliably determines the degree of narrativity of 190,461 verbatim, online consumer reviews and validate the automated text analysis with two controlled experiments. More transporting (i.e., engaging) and persuasive reviews have better-developed characters and events as well as more emotionally changing genres and dramatic event orders. This interdisciplinary, multimethod research should help future researchers (1) predict how narrativity affects consumers’ narrative transportation and persuasion, (2) measure the narrativity of large digital corpora of textual data, and (3) understand how this important linguistic feature varies along a continuum.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom van Laer & Jennifer Edson Escalas & Stephan Ludwig & Ellis A van den Hende & Gita V Johar & J Jeffrey Inman & Paul M Herr, 2019. "What Happens in Vegas Stays on TripAdvisor? A Theory and Technique to Understand Narrativity in Consumer Reviews," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 46(2), pages 267-285.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:46:y:2019:i:2:p:267-285.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jcr/ucy067
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Soumya Mukhopadhyay & V Kumar & Amalesh Sharma & Tuck Siong Chung, 2022. "Impact of review narrativity on sales in a competitive environment," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(6), pages 2538-2556, June.
    2. Xin (Shane) Wang & Neil Bendle & Yinjie Pan, 2024. "Beyond text: Marketing strategy in a world turned upside down," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 939-954, July.
    3. Meek, Stephanie & Wilk, Violetta & Lambert, Claire, 2021. "A big data exploration of the informational and normative influences on the helpfulness of online restaurant reviews," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 354-367.
    4. Cao, Xinyue & Qu, Zhirui & Liu, Yan & Hu, JiaJing, 2021. "How the destination short video affects the customers' attitude: The role of narrative transportation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    5. Eric Arnould & David Crockett & Giana Eckhardt, 2021. "Informing marketing theory through consumer culture theoretics," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 11(1), pages 1-8, June.
    6. Wang, Fei & Xu, Haifeng & Hou, Ronglin & Zhu, Zhen, 2023. "Designing marketing content for social commerce to drive consumer purchase behaviors: A perspective from speech act theory," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    7. Hamby, Anne & Kim, Hongmin & Spezzano, Francesca, 2024. "Sensational stories: The role of narrative characteristics in distinguishing real and fake news and predicting their spread," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    8. Alantari, Huwail J. & Currim, Imran S. & Deng, Yiting & Singh, Sameer, 2022. "An empirical comparison of machine learning methods for text-based sentiment analysis of online consumer reviews," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 1-19.
    9. Grewal, Dhruv & Herhausen, Dennis & Ludwig, Stephan & Villarroel Ordenes, Francisco, 2022. "The Future of Digital Communication Research: Considering Dynamics and Multimodality," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 224-240.
    10. Aleti, Torgeir & Pallant, Jason I. & Tuan, Annamaria & van Laer, Tom, 2019. "Tweeting with the Stars: Automated Text Analysis of the Effect of Celebrity Social Media Communications on Consumer Word of Mouth," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 17-32.
    11. Bertele, Kerrie & Feiereisen, Stephanie & Storey, Chris & van Laer, Tom, 2020. "It’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it! Effective message styles for promoting innovative new services," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 38-49.
    12. repec:oup:jconrs:v:49:y:2023:i:5:p:904-925. is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Dessart, Laurence & Standaert, Willem, 2023. "Strategic storytelling in the age of sustainability," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 371-385.

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