EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONALITY AND PRODUCT STAR RATINGS IN ONLINE REVIEWS
This article investigates the relationship between the emotionality of the review text and the product star ratings assigned to the product by the reviewer in user-generated reviews. The findings of this study address the major limitation in prior studies where the emotionality was often conceptualised as a unidimensional construct, and to further suggest that the positive and negative sentiments of the review text have a varying effect on the user ratings of the product. The analysis performed on the Amazon data set using generalised logistic regression methods evidenced the presence of negativity bias in the context of online reviews. The results indicated that negative sentiments in the review text are more influential in determining the star ratings of the products than the positive sentiments of the same magnitude in the review text. The paper invites the attention of the readers to the issue of potential incongruence between valence in review text and corresponding product star rating in the product reviews. This result has serious implications for the practitioners on multiple fronts, especially while making a trade-off between having to control negative consumer experiences and creating positive experiences. The study suggests that more emphasis should be laid on avoiding customer dissent rather than investing in creating the positive customer experience. The study also provides important insights to managers in designing and managing the online review systems of companies.