Determinants of Online Review Helpfulness for Korean Skincare Products in Online Retailing

Purpose: This study aims to examine how to review contents of experiential and utilitarian products (e.g., skincare products) and how to affect review helpfulness by applying natural language processing techniques. Research design, data, and methodology: This study uses 69,633 online reviews generated for the products registered at Amazon.com by 13 Korean cosmetic firms. The authors identify key topics that emerge about consumers’ use of skincare products such as skin type and skin trouble, by applying bigram analysis. The review content variables are included in the review helpfulness model, including other important determinants. Results: The estimation results support the positive effect of review extremity and content on the helpfulness. In particular, the reviewer’s skin type information was recognized as highly useful when presented together as a basis for high-rated reviews. Moreover, the content related to skin issues positively affects review helpfulness. Conclusions: The positive relationship between extreme reviews and helpfulness of reviews challenges the findings from prior literature. This result implies that an in-depth study of the effect of product types on review helpfulness is needed. Furthermore, a positive effect of review content on helpfulness suggests that applying big data analytics can provide meaningful customer insights in the online retail industry.