평점과 후기가 경험재 구매 의도에 미치는 영향: 선호 유사성과 선호 차별성의 조절 효과

As online purchases become more prevalent, ratings and reviews are used as key information that influences consumers’ purchase decisions. This study tried to empirically verify that subjectivity and personal taste are reflected in the evaluation of experience goods, which have been mainly mentioned as the difference between search goods and experience goods. In the case of search goods, objective quality evaluation is possible, so the influence of ratings and reviews appears relatively consistent regardless of personal taste or preference. In case of experience goods, however, the influence of ratings and reviews may vary depending on personal taste or preference because quality evaluation is subjective. This study aims to examine whether the review affects the experience goods more than the search goods, whether the effect of ratings on experience goods differs depending on the degree of preference differentiation, and whether the moderating effects of preference similarity and preference differentiation on purchase intention differ depending on the type of reviews when the review content is about the usage experience and personal taste that help evaluate the experience goods and preference differentiation and preference similarity are presented as preference related variables. The experiment was conducted in the mixed design of product type (search vs. experience goods) × review type (usage experience vs. personal preference) × review direction (positive vs. negative) × purchase intention (before review vs. after review). The first three variables are between-subjects variables and the last variable is a within-subjects variable. Based on the way products are presented in most online shopping malls in Korea, ratings and product information were first presented and purchase intention (purchasing intention 1) was measured. Then, reviews were presented and purchase intention (purchase intention 2) was measured again (refer to the appendix). There were conditions with high ratings (4.5 stars, 2,845 reviews) and conditions with low ratings (2 stars, 2,845 reviews). The rating was not taken as a separate variable because the rating and the review direction were reversed. To find out proper product types and review contents, three pretests were conducted online. Depending on the specific contents of the reviews, the helpfulness of the reviews and the expertise of the reviewers were perceived differently, so these variables were controlled as covariates. The main experiment was conducted online for the Embrain panel (survey period: March 7~11, 2022). Four hundred forty eight men and women in their 20s and 30s who are familiar with online shopping participated, and 56 people were assigned to each condition randomly. Data from 434 participants were analyzed, excluding the 14 participants who had the product presented as stimuli. There were 215 males (49.5%) and 219 females (50.5%), and the mean age was 30.02 years (SD=5.27). First, a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 repeated measurement ANOVA was conducted to test Hypothesis 1 examining the effect of reviews on changes in purchase intention. Looking at the product type × purchase intention interaction, the difference between purchase intention before and after was little in the case of search goods (before M=3.44, SE=.10 vs. after M=3.42, SE=.09). On the contrary, in the case of experience goods, purchase intention decreased significantly after presenting a review (before M=3.90, SE=.10 vs. After M=3.61, SE=.09, p < .001), supporting Hypothesis 1. To verify Hypothesis 2, Hayes(2013)’s PROCESS analysis was performed (Model 3). The independent variable was rating (low: 0, high: 1), the dependent variable was purchase intention 1, and the moderating variables were product type and preference differentiation. The three-way interaction was significant, supporting Hypothesis 2 stating that the effect of ratings affected the purchase intention of experience goods only when preference differentiation was low. To test Hypothesis 3, Hayes(2013)’s PROCESS analyses were performed separately for four different conditions of product type and review type. The independent variable was review direction (positive: 0, negative: 1), the dependent variable was changes in purchase intention (purchase intention 2 - purchase intention 1) and the moderating variables were preference similarity and preference differentiation. The three-way interaction was significant, supporting Hypothesis 3. That is, the more similar the preference, the greater the effect of reviews on purchase intention, but the greater the preference differentiation, the less the moderated effect of preference similarity. This moderated moderating effect was shown only for the experience product and the review type of personal preference. The most important factor influencing purchase decision is the specific content of the review. This study focused on the specific content of the review, which includes the usage experience and personal preference that can help the evaluation of experience goods. The results suggest that it is necessary to look at the influence of preference-related variables together with specific content details because individual preferences or tastes affect quality evaluation or purchase decisions of experience goods. In the future, it seems that variables representing content characteristics should be proposed and the effect of such characteristics on the helpfulness of reviews should be studied more actively. In practice, if you find out these content characteristics, have customers who write reviews evaluate them quantitatively, and show them to customers, online purchases will be much easier. In particular, in the case of experience goods, past purchase information or review information that can determine the preference similarity with reviewers will be of great help to purchase decisions.