Online consumer reviews and their construal level. Writing about experiences that feel distant or proximal.

Online consumer reviews are an important source of information for consumers. This e-WOM (electronic word-of-mouth) has effects on consumer attitudes and intentions (e.g. Van Hemelen et al. 2013; Willemsen et al., 2011). Very little research has dealt with the writing of these reviews, which this project approaches through the concept of mental construal. The main hypothesis is that different personal and situational characteristics in the review process affect the level of mental construal (Trope & Liberman, 2010) which determines the abstractness of the reviews. Abstract reviews are more influential than concrete ones (Schellekens et al., 2010, 2012). To test this hypothesis, the project will have two empirical (quantitative) lines of research. First, content analyses will be performed on a large and representative sample of reviews and review websites. A preliminary study (Smits, Verlegh & Van Hemelen, submitted) already linked abstractness to some website design factors that seem to link with mental construal (e.g. anonymous versus account-based reviews, product pictures). Second, experiments will single out the causality of these individual and combined effects of individual and situational. This research is relevant for firms and organizations who wish to help consumers make better decisions. Apart from the applied relevance, the research also serves a fundamental interest in the dynamics of human communication and its underlying psychological processes.