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Review helpfulness in online settings: an analysis of informational and emotional content

  • Betul Durkaya Kurtcan*
  • , Sebnem Burnaz
  • *Corresponding author for this work
  • Istanbul Technical University

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Online reviews are increasingly becoming a helpful resource for customers in their purchase decisions. Their helpfulness appears to be an important asset to evaluate the effectiveness of online reviews. Based on elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this study focuses on the factors in online consumer reviews that can influence review helpfulness and how the impact generated by these factors varies according to product type. Several analytical processes are applied to gather information on review content, such as feature extraction, sentiment analysis, and emotion analysis. An analysis of 1,673 reviews from Amazon.com shows that rating, length, image count, polarity, anger, fear, joy, and trust in reviews affect review helpfulness positively while subjectivity, informativeness, anticipation, sadness, and surprise in reviews have negative influence on review helpfulness. Product type is found to moderate the impact of review length, image count, review subjectivity, review informativeness, and emotions such as sadness, disgust, and joy on review helpfulness.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)149-175
Number of pages27
JournalInternational Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing
Volume17
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2026

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2026 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Keywords

  • emotion analysis
  • information extraction
  • online consumer reviews
  • review helpfulness
  • sentiment analysis

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