Reviews · Five experiments testing the effect of historical-rating variance on review persuasiveness, its mechanism, generalizability, and boundary conditions; the publisher page describes perceived expertise as an underlying process.
Expertise Makes Perfect: How the Variance of a Reviewer's Historical Ratings Influences the Persuasiveness of Online Reviews
Journal of Retailing · 2021
Summary
Consumers are more willing to accept a reviewer’s recommendation when the reviewer’s historical ratings in a product domain show greater variance; the publisher reports consistent support across five experiments.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
Use it as a product, platform or behavior mechanism reference rather than a direct forecast for a SaaS funnel.
Reported result
What the study found
Consumers are more willing to accept a reviewer’s recommendation when the reviewer’s historical ratings in a product domain show greater variance; the publisher reports consistent support across five experiments.
Research question
What the authors investigated
How does the variance of a reviewer’s historical ratings affect consumers’ acceptance of that reviewer’s online recommendations, and what role does perceived expertise play?
Design
Five experiments testing the effect of historical-rating variance on review persuasiveness, its mechanism, generalizability, and boundary conditions; the publisher page describes perceived expertise as an underlying process.
Sample and setting
Consumers/participants evaluating online-review recommendations across product-review contexts in five experiments; the publisher page describes studies testing the effect, mediation by perceived expertise, another product category, and boundary conditions.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Not stated on the publisher article-preview page fetched in this run.
Research sources
The publisher highlights state that reviewer-rating variance affects acceptance of recommendations, while the abstract says five experiments consistently support the hypothesis and underlying process. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; profile summarizes the accessible record and does not claim independent review of inaccessible full text.