The impact of online reviews on attitude changes: The differential effects of review attributes and consumer knowledge

Online review websites, such as Yelp, Zagat, Tripadvisor, and OpenTable have become an important platform for consumers to share their purchase experiences and express their opinions about products and services (Bailey, 2005; Chen and Xie, 2008; Litvin et al., 2008 ; Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). For example, 95 million reviews were available on Yelp by the end of 2015 and Yelp had a monthly average of 86 million unique visitors via their mobile device during the fourth quarter of 2015. Since these online reviews are written by consumers, viewers consider this information more relatable and trustworthy than marketer generated information (Anderson, 2013; Bickart and Schindler, 2001; Brown et al., 2007 ; Zhang et al., 2010). Consequently, how online reviews influence consumers’ attitudes has been of great interest to both researchers and practitioners