IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jconrs/v51y2025i5p937-958..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Digital Therapy for Negative Consumption Experiences: The Impact of Emotional and Rational Reviews on Review Writers

Author

Listed:
  • Alisa Yinghao Wu
  • Vicki G Morwitz

Abstract

This research tests a solution for consumers to recover faster from negative experiences. We identify this solution by examining how the manner in which review writers express their emotions and rational thoughts in their reviews causally influences review writers. The results of five studies (field data and experiments) show that, similar to writing about traumatic life events, when review writers express both emotional and rational aspects in reviews about negative consumption experiences, they feel better afterwards (i.e., they recover affectively), and are more likely to purchase again (i.e., they recover cognitively). We further examine why writing integrated reviews has positive effects on review writers by collecting biophysiological response data, which provide support for an account related to affective recovery, and by analyzing thought listing data, which provide support for an account related to cognitive recovery. This research shows that writing online reviews can serve as a digital therapy tool that helps consumers recover from negative experiences.

Suggested Citation

  • Alisa Yinghao Wu & Vicki G Morwitz, 2025. "Digital Therapy for Negative Consumption Experiences: The Impact of Emotional and Rational Reviews on Review Writers," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 51(5), pages 937-958.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:51:y:2025:i:5:p:937-958.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jcr/ucae037
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:51:y:2025:i:5:p:937-958.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.