Add the cool factor: An empirical investigation of the effect of positivity and pictorial images on review coolness

摘要

Cool excites, attracts, drives trends, stands out, and is considered a characteristic quality of appealing brands, products, or people. Despite the value cool online reviews provide to review contributors by drawing attention and peer recognition to them, and the potential value of cool reviews to focal businesses being reviewed, little has been done to understand what factors impact user perception of coolness in online reviews. In this paper, we explore some of these factors. We find that positive and favorable reviews are more likely to be perceived as being cool compared to negative and unfavorable reviews. Similarly, having pictorial images increases the likelihood of an online review being perceived as cool. However, we do find that the inclusion of pictorial images in online reviews is skewed towards highly positive reviews suggesting that review contributors may be adding pictorial images to support their very favorable reviews compared to unfavorable reviews.