2025/07/07 by Qing Yao, Haipeng Chen, Haipeng (Allan) Chen
Arts and Humanities · Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification #Digital Marketing and Social Media #Media Influence and Health
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/mar.70006
openalex publication_date 2025/07/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
ABSTRACT When sharing information and opinions regarding products, services, and experiences, communicators frequently utilize either sensory (e.g., “The curry tastes spicy”) or linking verbs (e.g., “The curry is spicy”). Does this difference in verb type affect communication effectiveness? If so, how? A multimethod investigation comprising five studies demonstrates that using sensory verbs can enhance the perception of online review helpfulness. Using actual online reviews from multiple product domains on the Amazon website, we show that reviews with more sensory verbs are perceived as more helpful. Follow‐up experiments offer supportive evidence for this sensory verb effect, support its underlying mechanism through narrative processing, identify its boundary conditions due to review perspectives and consumers' processing orientation, and demonstrate its influence on downstream purchase intentions. These findings illuminate how language influences consumer behavior, emphasize how a subtle yet crucial linguistic feature molds sensory communication, and offer clear implications for persuasion in a wide range of situations.