The impact of readability on the usefulness of online product reviews: A case study on an online bookstore

N. Korfiatis, D. Rodríguez, M.-A. Sicilia

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

33 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Online product reviews is an important advantage for consumers of experience goods in online marketplaces and act as a useful source of information during the purchase of a good. Furthermore in some online marketplaces consumers have the opportunity to evaluate how helpful a review was by using a binary evaluation interface provided by the online marketplace. This results to the usefulness score of a review which is calculated as a fraction of helpful votes over the total votes that this review has received. Our early results indicate that the usefulness score of a particular review is affected in a significant way by the qualitative characteristics of the review as measured by readability tests applied to a large dataset of reviews collected from the UK section of the popular online marketplace Amazon.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEmerging Technologies and Information Systems for the Knowledge Society
Subtitle of host publicationFirst World Summit on the Knowledge Society, WSKS 2008, Athens, Greece, September 24-26, 2008. Proceedings
EditorsMiltiadis Lytras, John M. Carroll, Ernesto Damiani, Robert D. Tennyson
PublisherSpringer Berlin / Heidelberg
Pages423-432
Number of pages10
Volume5288
ISBN (Electronic)9783540877813
ISBN (Print)9783540877806
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2008

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
PublisherSpringer Berlin Heidelberg
Volume5288
ISSN (Print)0302-9743

Keywords

  • Readbility tests
  • Online services

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