Does Online Review Inconsistency Matter? The Effect of Inconsistency on Product Sales

Online reviews play pivotal roles in the dissemination of information and provide essential mechanisms for consumers to express opinions and make purchasing decisions. In recent years, review inconsistency as a peculiar phenomenon has triggered several challenges, including consumer confusion, the spread of misinformation, and a decline in market competitiveness, etc. To mitigate these effects of inconsistency, we investigate review inconsistency in two aspects, rating sentiment inconsistency and rating dispersion, and examine the different effects on product sales. In this paper, we employ the theoretical framework of HSM to develop an empirical model and collect 94,843 reviews from JD.com. The findings indicate that rating sentiment inconsistency exerts a negative impact on product sales. Conversely, rating dispersion has a positive effect on sales. Furthermore, rating dispersion and timeliness act as moderators, mitigating the negative impact of sentiment inconsistency on sales, while review richness intensifies this negative impact.