Naive or Savvy: How Credible Are Online Reviews for Credence Services?

Online reviews allow consumers to share information about their service experiences with other consumers. Theoretically, sharing this information should reduce market information asymmetries between potential consumers and service providers because many attributes of a service experience cannot be evaluated prior to consumption (i.e., they are credence or experience attributes rather than search attributes; Huang, Lurie, and Mitra 2009). For example, although a consumer might be able to evaluate the prices of entrees (a search attribute) prior to eating at a restaurant, it is very difficult to evaluate their tastiness (an experience attribute) without having consumed a meal, and even after eating them, a consumer cannot verify the claim that they are made with organic ingredients (a credence attribute). Because consumers cannot assess the quality of credence attributes, consumer reviews of services that are dominated by credence attributes (e.g., doctors, auto mechanics) are of dubious credibility. Indeed, many doctors have strongly resisted the legitimacy of consumer reviews (Andrews 2008; Jain 2010), in some cases even requiring patients to sign documents promising never to review their doctors (ElBoghdady 2012).