How much is a picture worth? Online review picture background and its impact on purchase intention

Abstract

This study examines the impact of online review picture background and its interplay with product type and review features (e.g., star rating, texts) on consumers' purchase intention. Consumers make inferences about the reviewers' socioeconomic status (SES) from the background of online review pictures. Drawing on the social comparison literature, we find that the review picture background reflecting low SES triggers a stigma effect (threat to self-evaluation) for a mainstream (high-end) product, leading to decreased (enhanced) purchase intention. In addition, the stigma effect for a mainstream product is accentuated when there are multiple low-SES pictures, and when one low-SES picture is coupled with a positive (vs. negative), fit-oriented (vs. quality-oriented) textual review. However, the enhancing effect of one low-SES background picture for a high-end product continues to hold even when it is presented with multiple high-SES background pictures; the effect is reversed when there are multiple low-SES pictures.