Most of us assume we carefully weigh online reviews before making a purchase. New research suggests something simpler — and more powerful — is at work: repetition.
A study co-authored by Dezhi Yin, associate professor of information systems at the University of South Florida, finds that online reviews shape consumer attitudes and buying decisions more through automatic exposure than through careful analysis of detailed content.
Published in MIS Quarterly, the research draws on dual-process theories of decision-making, which distinguish between deliberate reasoning and fast, intuitive responses. Across two controlled experiments, the authors found that reviews shown more frequently had a stronger persuasive effect than longer, more detailed reviews. Simply seeing a review again and again mattered more than how thoroughly it was written.
The effect extends to both product attitudes and purchase intentions. And there’s a twist: negativity carries extra weight. Repeated negative reviews were significantly more influential than repeated positive ones, revealing a strong negativity bias in how consumers process information.
For online platforms and businesses, the implications are immediate. Display choices, such as which reviews are highlighted or repeated, can shape behavior as much as review quality itself.
Authors: Zhanfei Lei, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Dezhi Yin, University of South Florida; Han Zhang, Georgia Institute of Technology and Hong Kong Baptist University