The role of cultural values in consumers' evaluation of online review helpfulness: a big data approach

Purpose: Online consumer reviews are increasingly used by third-party e-commerce organizations to shed light on the positive and negative sides of the brands they sell. However, the large number of consumer reviews requires these organizations to shortlist the most helpful ones to cope with information overload. A growing number of scholars have been investigating the determinants of review helpfulness; however, little is known about the influence of cultural factors in consumer's evaluation of review helpfulness. Design/methodology/approach: This study has adopted Hofstede's cultural values framework to assess the influence of cultural factors on review helpfulness. We used a sample of 570,669 reviews of 851 hotels published by reviewers from 81 countries on Booking.com. Findings: Findings reveal that reviewers from cultural contexts that score high on power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and indulgence are more likely to write helpful reviews. Originality/value: This is one of the first cross-cultural studies in marketing using a big data approach in examining how users of reviews from different countries evaluate the helpfulness of online reviews.