EXPRESS: Haunted by a Bad Review: The Afterlife of Reading (Negative) Reviews in Consumer Experience

Consumers rely heavily on product reviews in their purchasing and consumption decisions, and how reviews influence product sales is well-documented. This research asks whether reviews might have an afterlife beyond purchase—that is, whether they can affect the product experience itself. Across five studies involving real consumer-generated reviews and product interaction, this research demonstrates that consumers who read reviews before consumption have different experiences with a product than consumers who experience the same product without reading reviews. Specifically, consumers who are exposed to negative reviews before they consume a product experience the reviewed product more negatively than consumers who have not read any reviews. Reading positive reviews, however, does not significantly affect the consumption experience. This asymmetrical assimilative effect arises because negative reviews increase the salience of negative attributes of the reviewed product during consumption, making those attributes more influential during product experience. The effect is robust across various contexts, although forewarning consumers and prompting them to form independent opinions can reduce it. These findings open the door for investigation into the broader influence of reviews on consumption, beyond the point of purchase, and have important practical implications for marketers seeking to navigate this influence.