Hypotheses
Transferability to Book Reviews
Norm of Reciprocity
Gouldner’s norm of reciprocity states “that a social unit or group is more likely to contribute to another which provides it with benefits than to one which does not”1. In its core, the norm of reciprocity is based on a mutual exchange between two subjects/groups.
Mainly, Kim et al. argue that incentivization—here in terms of receiving a non-monetary incentive in form of a free sample product—elicits the norm of reciprocity and that, consequently, the reviewers feel indebted and as such obliged to return something to their giver, in this case by “positively stating their consumption experience and by recommending the product to others”2.
They infer the following hypotheses:
H1a Sponsored reviews are more positive than organic reviews.
H1b Sponsored reviewers are more likely to recommend the product than organic reviewers.
The norm of reciprocity can be interpreted as being “an innate [human] tendency”3. As a consequence, it may be argued that book reviewers also—unconsciously—adhere to the norm of reciprocity when writing book reviews in exchange for having received a free review copy. This applies even more when considering the closeness of the Social Reading book world (cf. Background-chapter): Presumably, the social ties between reviewer and publisher/author are more intimate than between a manufacturer and reviewer of cosmetic products.
Both hypotheses are transferable.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
In Kim et al.’s experiment, sponsored reviews are disclosed by a corresponding statement which is added to the review by the platform automatically. Kim et al. argue that sponsored reviewers are aware that their economic interest will be disclosed. As such, “the disclosure statement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for sponsored reviewers”4, resulting in a situation where the reviewers try to write extraordinarily honest reviews to provide a counterweight. Kim et al. resume:
Hence, they will engage in deeper cognitive processing, meaning that they will think about more aspects of the product and more arguments for and against it.5
On a linguistic level, this could lead to more elaborate and more complex reviews. As a consequence, the following two hypotheses are derived:
H2a Sponsored reviews are more complex than organic reviews.
H2b Sponsored reviews are more elaborate than organic reviews.
For book reviews, this is different because no disclosure statement is inserted by the platform; the users add them themselves. Remarkably, book reviewers have their own approach to disclose sponsorship, namely by expressing their gratitude towards the incentive giver (i.e. the publisher). While this is—from a legal perspective—not an accurate way of disclosing sponsorship accoring to the regulations by the German media state authorities, the function that these statements serve is similar. Thus, it can be assumed that this practice indicates a certain consciousness among sponsored book reviewers in terms of legal regulations. Thus, this thesis argues that sponsored book reviewers are aware of the possible damage of adding a disclosure statement to their reviews’ credibility and therefore try to write especially unbiased reviews.
Consequently, hypotheses H2a and H2b are transferable.
Reviewer Motivations
Kim et al. build upon the motivation typology of Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) and claim that sponsored and organic reviewers write reviews for different purposes. For organic reviewers, they refer to the J-shape distribution found in reviews, confirming that they assume that “consumers who are either very satisfied or very disappointed tend to write about their consumption experiences”6. Contrarily, for sponsored reviewers, they assume that there are different motivations, namely receiving economic incentives as well as helping the company or others. Therefore, Kim et al. hypothesize:
H3a Sponsored reviews are less extreme than organic reviews, i.e., they show a lower proportion of 1-star or 5-star reviews in their star rating distribution, compared to
organic reviews.
With a similar argumentation, Kim et al. expect “that sponsored reviews would be more objective because organic reviews are often motivated by the need to share either very positive or very negative experiences”7. Thus, they hypothesize:
H3b Sponsored reviews are more objective than organic reviews.
Book reviewers generally also write book reviews to vent positive or negative feelings (among other motives). Following Kim et al.’s line of reasoning, this may lead to more subjective writing in non-incentivized book reviews. Contrarily, it can be further assumed that incentivized book reviewers are mainly motivated to write a review by having received a free product (book review copy) and because they want to support the publisher/author.
Thus, both hypotheses are transferable.
Review Perception
Further, Kim et al. explore the perception of sponsored reviews. They base their argumentation on the attribution theory8 and persuasion knowledge theory9. The first declares that “claims made by an ‘externally motivated’ reviewer may be discounted as biased”10, the persuasion knowledge model “predicts that when consumers recognize this ulterior motive, they will be more likely to perceive the reviewer as insincere, and hence not credible”11. Kim et al. derive the following hypothesis:
H4 Sponsored reviews are perceived as less helpful than organic reviews.
As has been noted before, the incentivization behind book reviews on LovelyBooks is disclosed (although implicitly) by the reviewer, review readers could perceive the review as being biased and less/not credible.
Thus, hypothesis H4 is transferable.
Selected Hypotheses
Although all original hypotheses are transferable to the domain of book reviews, with respect to the scope of the thesis and other limiting factors such as data availability, the following hypotheses are derived from Kim et al.:
H1 Incentivized book reviews are more positive than non-incentivized book reviews.
H2 Incentivized book reviews are more complex than non-incentivized book reviews.
H3 Incentivized book reviews are more elaborate than non-incentivized book reviews.
H4 Incentivized book reviews are less extreme than non-incentivized book reviews.
H5 Incentivized book reviews are more objective than non-incentivized book reviews.