What Happens in Vegas Stays on TripAdvisor? Understanding the Role of Narrativity in Consumer Reviews

Consumer online reviews are the most influential form of word of mouth after recommendations from family and friends. What types of reviews affect consumer behavior more? Although prior work provides a valid description of consumer responses to reviews of material purchases, it does not encompass responses to reviews of experiential purchases. We assert that these experience reviews are narrative to different degrees. To test this assertion, we mine 190,461 reviews of 989 experiences on TripAdvisor, adapt contemporary quantitative techniques, and conduct an automated text analysis and two experiments. We find that narrative elements in texts related to (1) identifiable characters, (2) an imaginable plot, and (3) genres that involve changing emotional story shapes are associated with narrative transportation into and positive feedback on the review, and attitude toward and intention to purchase the reviewed experience. Thus, the narrativity of experience reviews generates these consumer responses.