How primary and supplementary reviews affect consumer decision making? Roles of psychological and managerial mechanisms

Highlights：

• Investigated the effect of different combinations of primary (or initial) reviews and the supplementary (or additional) ones on the consumer decision-making.

• Primary reviews can be inconsistent and consistent with the supplementary reviews.

• Proposed and tested an ambivalence-confidence framework of inconsistent and consistent reviews. Inconsistent reviews affect consumer decision-making through ambivalence while consistent reviews influence it through confidence.

• Proposed online reviews truthfulness and seller response to the reviews as managerial mechanisms to manage inconsistent and consistent reviews. Online reviews truthfulness mitigates the ambivalence caused by the inconsistent reviews and increases the intention to buy in case of consistent reviews.

• The presence of seller response to the reviews increases the intention to buy in case of inconsistent reviews.