In Coherence We Trust: Analyzing Effects of Discourse Coherence in Online Reviews

Abstract

In recent years, online reviews have become an indispensable part of commercials and could significantly influence product/service sales. This is driven by its ability to inform and persuade consumers. However, the exploding number of reviews may cause information overload and undermine the decision-making efficiency of consumers. Drawing on linguistics and persuasion literatures, we explore how, why and when discourse coherence of reviews influences the decision-making process of consumers. Results from our experiments, survey and machine learning models provide converging evidence that more coherent reviews are perceived as more persuasive and thus improve decision-making efficiency. Consumers tend to read fewer reviews and take less time to make purchase decisions when they are shown coherent reviews. When conditioned on purchase decisions, the effect of coherence is more prominent for non-purchases. These findings deepen our understanding of consumers’ decision-making processes and provide critical insights for review platforms, companies and reviewers.

Keywords: discourse coherence, decision-making efficiency, online reviews, review persuasiveness, sales prediction models