Attitude contagion in consumer opinion platforms: posters and lurkers

The study details why and how product reviews from consumer opinion platforms affect individual users' brand buying behavior. Drawing on social theories, the authors predict that consumers' perceptions of other consumers' product reviews affect brand buying intentions through two intervening variables: product- and brand-related attitudes. Moreover, the authors investigate whether these relationships are contingent on user type (i.e., active posters or passive lurkers). The empirical results support a multiple mediation framework in which product- and brand attitudes mediate the effects of consumer product reviews on individual brand buying intentions. In addition, consumer product reviews appear to more strongly affect the brand-related attitudes of posters than lurkers. Lurkers, who make up the majority of opinion platform users, are much less influenced by the opinions of others than posters. Encouraging variations in poster- and lurker rates may be an effective means for companies to manage and control consumer-to-consumer communication.