Quality in Context: Evidence That Consumption Context Influences User-Generated Product Ratings

Abstract

This paper investigates how consumption context impacts user-generated ratings by altering the experienced utility of products. Using 218,918 ratings scraped from REI.com, we find that ratings for cold-weather gear (products designed to keep people warm) are positively correlated with unseasonable temperature: These products get lower ratings when the weather is abnormally cold and higher ratings when the weather is abnormally warm. Ratings for other products (e.g., bicycles) are not affected by temperature. This suggests that consumers neglect how situational factors (e.g., ambient temperature) affect their experience with a product (e.g., how warm they feel) when asked to rate that product. Additional evidence from three experiments suggests this tendency exists across many different contexts that influence consumption experience for different products and is stubbornly robust to potential interventions.

Keywords: user-generated ratings, online ratings, context effects, online word-of-mouth