On the Persuasiveness of Opinions versus Advice: An Information Diagnosticity Perspective

Consumers can share information about products in the form of either opinions—whereby they merely communicate whether they like or dislike a product—or advice—whereby they also provide explicit suggestions as to how others should behave. Whether opinions are more influential on consumer behavior than advice or vice versa appears unknown. In three experiments, the authors investigate the role of the perceived diagnosticity of the information as a factor explaining when advice is more or less influential than opinions by exploring the effect of two variables, product category and communicator-receiver relationship closeness, that affect how diagnostic information is perceived.