Examining the diminishing marginal impact of online reviews on consumers’ information acquisition and purchase decisions

Online reviews influence consumers’ assessments of product qualities, which in turn can affect their purchase decisions. However, the impact of online reviews is constrained by the information acquisition factor, a process through which consumers obtain information to assess product qualities. This paper examines the diminishing marginal impact of online reviews on consumers’ purchase decisions from the perspective of information acquisition. Leveraging HCI theories of competition for attention and visual search, we study their direct (i.e., on purchase intentions) and indirect (i.e., mediated by information acquisition) impacts on consumer decisions. We conducted empirical experiments and mathematical modeling to test our research hypotheses and framework. The findings reveal that video/image reviews have both direct and indirect diminishing marginal impacts on purchase intentions. This paper contributes to the literature on online reviews and offers practical implications for e-commerce stakeholders.