Rebecca Wang on How Salience Shapes Judgement in Online Reviews

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In this episode of Lehigh University’s College of Business ilLUminate podcast, host Stephanie Veto talks with Rebecca Wang and her research on online reviews and judgement. 

Rebecca is an associate professor in the Department of Marketing, and her research in marketing, data science, and technology delves into the digital and mobile channels, social media dynamics, and data-driven marketing strategies. 

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Below is an edited excerpt from the conversation. Read the complete podcast transcript [PDF].

Veto: Your current research is about how salience shapes judgment in online reviews. To start, what is salience? 

Wang: That's a great question. Salience is a very fancy way of saying how noticeable or top-of-mind some information or perspective is when we make our judgments and decisions. This is different from information being available, because information can, in fact, be available without being salient, right? We may technically know something or be aware of something, but we're not actively thinking about it at the moment when we make a decision. In that sense, even knowing something may actually have little influence on that decision. That's what we mean by salience. 

And we also make the connection to what psychologists typically refer to as system one versus system two thinking, or heuristic versus deliberative thinking. A lot of times when we make very quick decisions, we rely on these easy cues. So, in online reviews, for instance, we see five-star reviews, right? We see a large number of reviews or maybe reviews of a familiar brand, and then we make a very quick judgment, right? If it's 4.8 stars out of 5, it must be a good product. And we all do it. 

We all use shortcuts. That's how humans have survived thousands and thousands of years. But that might not be the right way to make decisions in certain circumstances. So that's essentially what we're studying. The broader question we're interested in is what happens when we take information and think about the context surrounding that information and bring it more salient, right? Bring it forward as part of our decision-making. 

Veto: You first looked at whether brand-sourced and third-party reviews differ. What did you find?

Wang: This is not a study on salience per se. It's more a precursor study. So, all we want to know is, for the same set of products, on average, what do brand-sourced reviews say versus third-party reviews? Brand-sourced reviews are reviews that were collected by the brand themselves. For instance, you go to clinique.com, you bought a lipstick, and the reviews left on clinique.com is a brand-sourced review. Third-party reviews are reviews collected by third parties. For instance, Reddit, right, would be one example. Or let's say a retailer, sephora.com. The mere fact that the platform is different, are reviews different? The answer is yes. And we look at this across three very different contexts. 

We look at beauty products. We look at apparel, clothing, athletic wear and healthcare providers. Repeatedly, we find that brand-sourced reviews or first-party reviews are more positive than third-party reviews. They're more positive in terms of the texts, how the words and phrasings are used in the review text, as well as the review ratings. This is pretty consistent. So specifically, we did look at Clinique. It was across the same 70 products with 134,000 reviews. The average rating on Clinique's own website was 4.35 versus Sephora. Which was 4.13. We also looked at REI. So, REI has review syndication, which basically means that some of the reviews they show on their website came from the manufacturers, the brands that REI sells. If we look at the syndicated reviews versus the organic reviews that REI customers left on their own website. Again, brand-sourced syndicated reviews have higher ratings. And then we see the same thing in healthcare as well, which is a little bit alarming. And some of these differences are quite large.

Veto: Why might brand-sourced reviews be more positive?

Wang: I think there are many reasons, one of which is selection. Consumers who are loyal to the brand might buy from the brand directly, and then they might leave feedback directly on the brand's website. One could simply be a very innocent kind of reasoning, right? The other one is active management. Sometimes brands solicit reviews. They also control how reviews are displayed.

And they also do review syndication, right? Which should be a random selection, but it probably isn't. It should be a random selection based on how helpful, how descriptive the review is, but we may or may not be able to prove that objectivity. We don't know. And then, people might feel somehow less comfortable criticizing a company directly on their own website. There could be that as well.

Veto: Can you describe what system one and system two thinking is?

Wang: System one, or heuristic processing, is very simple. We use peripheral information to make our judgment. We look at 4.8 stars, for instance, thousands of reviews, maybe a familiar brand. Those are all very accessible cues to drive a judgment, right? You don't think about what's behind them. You don't think about how they were being formed. You don't think about alternative cues that you may be missing. So that's what we mean by system one processing. You just take things as they are. Typically, you do that to form very quick judgments.

System two, or deliberative processing, especially when sources are made salient, that triggers you to shift to that kind of thinking mode. So, you might stop and ask, "Where did the reviews come from? Are there any other sources? Should I interpret this rating differently because of what the source is? Who collected it?" So, in that sense, salience acts like a trigger to shift from system one to system two.