Reviews and reputation · 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
Xiaoyue Wu, Liyin Jin, Qian Xu (2021). Expertise Makes Perfect: How the Variance of a Reviewer's Historical Ratings Influences the Persuasiveness of Online Reviews. Journal of Retailing. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2020.05.006.
Plain-English take
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: Use it as a product, platform or behavior mechanism reference rather than a direct forecast for a SaaS funnel.
How much weight to give this
3.5/5 Moderate evidence for a specific setting
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every 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.
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.
Based on the publisher-described design and comparison; see the article for complete analysis.
Publisher record was fetched directly; full text was not assumed open.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the retrieved publisher record.
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.
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.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Not stated on the publisher article-preview page fetched in this run.
Possible founder application
Use it as a product, platform or behavior mechanism reference rather than a direct forecast for a SaaS funnel.
Evidence access
Publisher abstract/metadata retrieved; consult the linked paper for full methods and tables.
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.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.