Article published in the Journal of Service Research
In the current issue of the Journal of Service Research (VHB-JOURQUAL: A), Sören Köcher, together with Sarah Köcher (TU Dortmund University), published the article "The Mode Heuristic in Service Consumers' Interpretations of Online Rating Distributions."
In a series of eight studies, the authors demonstrate a tendency among consumers to use the arithmetic mode as a heuristic basis when drawing inferences from graphical displays of online rating distributions. The rationale underlying this phenomenon is that the mode (i.e., the most frequent rating which is represented by the tallest bar in a graphical display) attracts consumers’ attention because of its visual salience and is thus disproportionately weighted when they draw conclusions.
With their work, the authors contribute to a better understanding of how customers process and interpret graphical illustrations of online rating distributions and provide companies with a new key figure that—aside from rating volume, average ratings, and rating dispersion—should be incorporated in the monitoring, analyzing, and evaluating of review data.
You can access the (open access) article here: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F10946705211012475