Online reviews are a major decision drive for shoppers making holiday purchase. However, what are the criteria to select the right review? A study suggest that typos and spelling errors affect the credibility of reviews. However, the impact of such errors varies according to the type of mistake and to the consumer’s tendency in trusting others’ opinions.

Consumers who need to buy something they are not familiar with, resort to online reviews to have suggestions and opinions. However not all reviews have the same level of credibility.

A recent study from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business at IUPUI investigated the topic of trust toward reviews, finding that consumer’s orientation is affected by spelling errors and typos. However, the weight of such errors in influencing each consumer depends on the type of error and that consumer’s general tendency to trust others.

The study, from Dena Cox and Anthony Cox, both professors of marketing at the Kelley School, and Jeffrey Cox, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University, examined about 300 participants’ reactions to different online reviews with either no errors; typographical errors, such as common keystroke errors like “wsa” instead of “was”; or spelling errors like “sevral” or “useing.”

The study’s results suggest that consumers who have a high level of trust in other people identify a gap between these two types of errors in online reviews.

Anthony Cox, who has also the role of faculty chair of the Kelley Business of Medicine Physician MBA Program at IUPUI, observes that these trusting consumers consider misspellings as “errors of knowledge,” which they are willing to overlook, and typos as “errors of carelessness,” which decreases their confidence towards the reviewer.

On the other hand, these consumers who have a low level of trust in others are not influenced one way or the other by reviews that contain either typographical errors or spelling mistakes, he explained.

“For high-trusters, typographical errors signaled a general lack of conscientiousness or carelessness that harmed reviewer credibility and reduced involvement with the content of the review,” Anthony Cox explained.

“For example, a typographical error, like substituting ‘regualr’ for ‘regular,’ seems more likely to be attributed to careless writing by someone who ‘knows better,’” he added. “Conversely, a spelling error, like substituting ‘hite’ for ‘height,’ might be attributed to a lack of education or to a cognitive challenge such as dyslexia, traits over which the writer has little control.”

Online reviews play both a positive and negative role. Anthony Cox explained: “They are a source of not only information but also misinformation. You don’t know the reviewers. You don’t even know if they are who they say they are, if they’ve actually used the product or if someone paid them to write the review.”

The author suggests that, when deciding to trust online reviews, consumers should read carefully, as their own level of trust in others will likely play a role in how they react to them.

Written by: Pietro Paolo Frigenti

Journal Reference: Cox, D., Cox, J. C., Cox, A. D. (2017). To Err is human? How typographical and orthographical errors affect perceptions of online reviewers. Computers in Human Behavior; 75: 245 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.05.008