Online reviews help consumers make informed product choices by serving as a valuable source of information for a buying decision. However, consumer’s situational constraints such as time pressure or purchase uncertainty negatively impact the way in which buyers evaluate and use online reviews, reducing their effectiveness. This study examines the influence of situational constraints, namely perceived time pressure and purchase uncertainty, on consumers’ evaluation and use of online reviews for information search. This empirical study used an online survey to collect data from 560 Amazon Mechanical Turk users. Findings indicate that both perceived time pressure and perceived purchase uncertainty are positively associated with heuristic processing of online reviews but negatively associated with systematic processing of online reviews. Moreover, while both heuristic and systematic information processing increased buyers’ self-confidence in their purchase decisions, systematic processing led to greater buyer self-confidence than did heuristic processing. This study concludes with a discussion of practical and academic implications, as well as future research directions.

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情境约束对消费者评价和在线评论使用的影响：启发式系统模型

在线评论可作为有价值的购买决策信息源，帮助消费者做出明智的产品选择。但是，消费者的时间限制（例如时间压力或购买不确定性）会对购买者评估和使用在线评论的方式产生负面影响，从而降低其有效性。这项研究检验了情境约束（即感知的时间压力和购买不确定性）对消费者评估和使用在线评论进行信息搜索的影响。这项经验研究使用在线调查从560位Amazon Mechanical Turk用户中收集数据。研究结果表明，感知的时间压力和购买不确定性都与在线评论的启发式处理成正相关，而与在线评论的系统化处理成负相关。而且，启发式和系统的信息处理都增加了购买者对购买决策的自信心，而系统性处理则比启发式处理带来了更大的购买者自信心。本研究以对实践和学术意义以及未来研究方向的讨论作为结尾。