How consumers attend to online reviews: an eye-tracking and network analysis approach

Online reviews can play a significant role in consumer decision-making processes. Previous research has focused on investigating the effects of different review elements, such as valence or volume, on sales rank and perceived helpfulness. However, very little is known about how consumers actually attend to and process reviews. Moreover, reviews exist in the context of other elements on product pages, but previous studies have not investigated the combined effects of the different product page elements. This study uses eye tracking to investigate how consumers attend to product pages. Participants (N = 74) were asked to review product pages of five different brands of either a search or an experience product. The results show that although product-related information is most important for consumers, consumers also spend time on review-related information, particularly the review text and reviewer information. Also, we observe differences in attention paid to different page elements for search versus experience products.