Consumers are increasingly relying on electronic word-of-mouth, such as online reviews, before making purchase decisions. To reduce uncertainty about the validity of a review, consumers draw on different attributes of online review platforms, including the overall aggregated rating and perceived expertise of the review writer. This research aims to verify whether the aggregated rating or a single expert review is more convincing. To investigate the power of expert reviews, two scenario-based experiments were conducted in order to compare the aggregated rating with a single conflicting review. The results indicate that a single expert review can nullify the influence of the aggregated rating on purchase intention, and that the influence of the conflicting expert review differs depending on the reader’s attitude towards online reviews. The findings indicate that expert reviewers play an important role on eWOM platforms and can be helpful for service providers and customers alike.

消费者在做出购买决定之前越来越依赖电子口碑，例如在线评论。为了减少评论有效性的不确定性，消费者利用在线评论平台的不同属性，包括总体综合评分和评论作者的专业知识。这项研究旨在验证综合评分或单个专家评价是否更有说服力。为了调查专家审阅的能力，进行了两个基于方案的实验，以便将汇总评分与单个冲突审阅进行比较。结果表明，单个专家审阅可以使总评级对购买意愿的影响无效，并且冲突的专家审阅的影响因读者对在线审阅的态度而异。