Online customer reviews and consumer evaluation: The role of review font

•Reading difficulty of font reduces the impact of online customer reviews.•Difficult-to-read (vs. easy-to-read) fonts hurt positively reviewed products.•Difficult-to-read (vs. easy-to-read) fonts benefit negatively reviewed products.•Font has an effect through consumers’ perceived reviewer credibili...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Information & management 2018-06, Vol.55 (4), p.430-440
Main Authors: Huang, Yunhui, Li, Changxin, Wu, Jiang, Lin, Zhijie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Credibility
Need for cognition
Online customer reviews
Processing ease
Review valence
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Summary:•Reading difficulty of font reduces the impact of online customer reviews.•Difficult-to-read (vs. easy-to-read) fonts hurt positively reviewed products.•Difficult-to-read (vs. easy-to-read) fonts benefit negatively reviewed products.•Font has an effect through consumers’ perceived reviewer credibility.•These effects of font vanish when consumers are motivated to elaborate. Inspired by the literature on processing fluency and the practical question of how to choose fonts for website design, we investigated the impact of customer reviews on consumer evaluation under an easy-to-read (vs. difficult-to-read) review font. We found that the feeling of ease in reading led consumers to judge the reviewers as more credible, thus increasing the impact of the reviews. Moreover, the effect of font diminished when consumers elaborated information more thoroughly (i.e., when high in need for cognition, or in an accountable situation) and thus did not use simple heuristics (reading ease) to make judgment.
ISSN:0378-7206
1872-7530
DOI:10.1016/j.im.2017.10.003