What's New With You? On the Moderating Effect of Product Novelty on eWOM Effectiveness

With the growing importance of the Internet and its increasing impact on everyday behaviour and consumption practices, online recommendations by other consumers are of great importance. As a major source of web-accessible information, prior research provides support for the role online reviews play in consumers' decision-making processes. Our research investigates the thus far, understudied effect of novelty on the effectiveness of e-recommendations via online reviews. We conduct a multi-categorical study integrating the moderating effect of product novelty on the recommendation receiver's purchase intention after exposure to a positive or negative online review. We find that new products are indeed less appealing and more impacted by online reviews, but only for products that are purchased frequently enough to distinguish between new and old ones. On the other hand, products that are less familiar to the customer are all the same new to him whether they were launched on the market recently or a long time ago. Our study contributes to the growing field of online word-of-mouth behaviour research by investigating the role of novelty in several product categories.