| Online customer-generated reviews play important roles in the process of consumers purchase decision, but reviews with different properties differ in usefulness. Therefore, a question that what types of reviews are more useful, and how the usefulness of reviews influence consumers purchase intention and behavior should be addressed.Based on Purchase Inhibitors Theory, online review usefulness has different effects on purchase intention and behavior because some inhibiting factors(e.g., waiting for less price) may detach purchase intention and purchase behavior. Hence, we separately investigate the effects of online review usefulness on purchase intention and purchase behavior. In addition, the relationship between online reviews and purchase intention and behavior may be influenced by other variables, such as review valence, but the extant research tends to ignore the moderators between online review usefulness and purchase intention and behavior.Based on the above mentioned theoretical gaps, this research attempts to(1) discover the determinants of online review usefulness,(2) uncover the different effects of online review usefulness on purchase intention and behavior, and(3) identify the theoretical boundaries of effects of online review usefulness through three studies.In study 1, we detected factors that determine online review usefulness, and further expedite or hinder purchase. The results showed six new factors, such as reliability, associative cues, relevance to selection criterion, existence of photos, consistency of reviews, and perceived similarity with reviewers. It is noteworthy that associative cues play more important roles in delaying purchase than expediting purchase. Moreover, some factors found in previous research are not confirmed in this research, such as grammar errors, typos, application of idioms and humor, and modest mood.In study 2, we built a model explicating the relationship between online review usefulness and change in purchase intention, and testing the moderating effect of review valence. We tested the effects of online review usefulness on purchase intention and the moderating effects of review valence through a 2(online review usefulness: high vs. low) × 3(review valence: positive, negative, vs. medium) factorial experiment. The experiment results showed that online review usefulness and valence respectively significantly change purchase intention. In addition, online review valence moderates the relationship between online review usefulness and change in purchase intention. Specifically, perceived usefulness has the strongest effects on change in purchase intention when online review valence is negative, followed by positive reviews, and medium reviews.In study3, we investigated the influence of online review usefulness on purchase behavior. To discover the different effects of online review usefulness on purchase intention and behavior, we tested effects of online review usefulness on purchase behavior, and the moderating effects of online review valence between online review usefulness and purchase behavior. The experiment results showed that online review usefulness and valence respectively significantly influence purchase behavior. Additionally, online review usefulness is related positively to purchase likelihood when reviews are positive and medium but negatively related to purchase likelihood when reviews are negative. Based on the results in study 2 and study 3, we can conclude that online review usefulness has different effects on purchase intention and behavior. Specifically, the effect sizes of positive and medium online reviews on purchase intention are relatively small but the effect sizes of those reviews on purchase behavior are big. This finding may imply that consumer are still likely to engage in purchase behavior, albeit purchase intention is low, indicating the insufficiency of applying intention to predict behavior.This research contributes the existing research from at least three ways. Firstly, we detected six determinants of online review usefulness, in which associative cues, relevance to selection criterion, existence of photos, and perceived similarity with reviews show that consumers focus more on the concrete contents of reviews rather than the affective tendency when they are evaluating products based on reviews. Our findings imply that future research should shift to the perspective of review contents from the perspective of affective tendency of reviews.Secondly, we conducted the research on the effects of perceived usefulness of online reviews on purchase intention and purchase behavior separately and shows the effects of perceived usefulness of online reviews on purchase intention and purchase behavior are different. The result provides an enlightenment on future study on the relationship between online purchase intention and purchase behavior.Thirdly, we used two different measures to gauge purchase intention before and after reading reviews. The measure method can help more clearly uncover the dynamics of purchase intention, and thus more accurately discover the influence of online reviews on purchase intention.Finally, we identified the theoretical boundaries of effects of online review usefulness through investigating the moderating effects of review valence. Specifically, usefulness of negative reviews have the strongest influence on both change in purchase intention and purchase behavior. The effect sizes of positive and medium reviews on purchase intention are relatively small, but those reviews still significantly influence purchase behavior. The findings open new ways for investigating the mechanism of influence of online review usefulness on purchase intention and behavior in future.Meanwhile, the identified determinants of online review usefulness can help firms improve the effectiveness and efficiencies of word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. Additionally, the findings can provides some guidance for firms about how to manage online reviews strategically based on review valence and the usefulness of online reviews.
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