The power of words: how emotional review writing boosts customer loyalty

New research from Bayes Business School suggests writers of online reviews are more likely to recommend products and services to others, and repurchase themselves, if they are induced to reflect emotionally on their experiences rather than factually.

Reading reviews from others helps inform our decision-making on what to buy, where to visit, or who should provide our services – but how does the way we write them affect our own likelihood to recommend and repeat these experiences?

Three separate studies, co-authored by Dr Wanqing Zhang, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Bayes, along with academics from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, explored how language used in customer reviews influences subsequent behaviours of review writers.

Key findings include:

• Emotionally charged, affective reviews strengthen a review writer’s loyalty, increasing the likelihood of referring a service or product and making repeat purchases.
• Reviews focused on rational analysis and detailed, cognitive content reduce a writer’s propensity to repurchase or recommend, fostering greater criticism and deliberation.
• The length and detail of a review have varying effects. Longer reviews have a significant negative impact on loyalty when the product or service is simple, costly, or when the customer is highly experienced.

Results suggest how review writing can be effectively engineered by companies and customer review platforms to encourage repeat purchases and referrals from review providers. For example, questions like “How did this product make you feel?” or “What was the highlight of your visit?" can induce emotions, while “What are the pros and cons of this service?” and “Describe your experience” might encourage more cognitive discussion.

The first study involved a field experiment of 4,016 customers for an online household services platform in China. Researchers implemented interventions such as monetary incentives and emotional prompts to influence how customers wrote reviews. Results showed that greater emotional expression in a review increased the likelihood of customers to repurchase and refer the service, while more detailed, rational reviews lessened these behaviours. The effects of review length depended on the complexity of the service, the price, and the customer's prior experience.

A second study tested robustness of these findings in a different context, controlling for product quality, in a scenario-based experiment involving podcast trials with nearly 1,900 participants. By randomly assigning incentives and specific emotional or factual review prompts, the study once again suggested emotional content in reviews increased both referral and repurchase decisions of writers, while analytical content decreased them. Negative impacts of lengthy reviews were particularly evident among experienced, senior and female consumers.

The third study used observational, non-causal data to explore unsolicited and unincentivised reviews. The researchers analysed nearly 9,000 customer reviews spanning more than 2,000 airline passengers. Even in the absence of solicitations or incentives, patterns from the first two studies held.

The research consistently revealed that expression of feelings or emotions in reviews made writers more likely to repurchase and recommend the product or service, while more analytically detailed reviews had the opposite effect by invoking greater criticism. Furthermore, when customers purchased simpler or more expensive products, or had more experience, they were more inclined to rely on detailed processing during review writing – intensifying the negative impact of review length on repurchasing and referral.

Findings suggest how review writing can be effectively engineered by companies to encourage repeat purchases and referrals from review providers.

The study also sheds light on an ‘informativeness-loyalty trade-off’. While informative reviews benefit readers, writing such reviews can hinder authors’ referral and (re)purchase behaviours. Firms should, therefore, carefully balance the goal of eliciting informative feedback with the need to protect brand loyalty of review writers.

Dr Zhang said:

“Many companies use reviews to collect valuable customer feedback, develop brand awareness and establish customer loyalty.

“Previous studies have investigated the impact of reviews on their readers, but little is known about how authors generate their own affinity through writing reviews.

“Our research shows that although informative reviews can be useful to companies for shedding light on complex or lesser-known products and services, writers tend to think in more negative terms about a product or service experience they are reviewing if encouraged to over-elaborate on their consumption experiences.

“This trade-off has important implications for companies, marketers, and customer service providers, who should tailor their review solicitation strategies according to the product and service they are offering and the characteristics of potential reviewers.

‘Customers’ Review Content and Their Referral and (Re)Purchase Behaviors’ by Ruhan Liu, Dr Wanqing Zhang and Professor Pradeep K. Chintagunta is published in the Journal of Marketing.

Notes for Editors

1. The sample size for the first study of reviews for an online household services firm was 4,016.
2. The sample size for the second study of reviews for a sleep techniques podcast was 1,899.
3. The third observational study examined 8,790 reviews of 81 different airlines between 2009 and 2019, from 2,219 customers.