Is beauty helpful? effects of reviewer attractiveness on perceived helpfulness of online review

In this paper, we investigate the impact of reviewer attractiveness on perceived helpfulness of the online review. Extending the selective-accessibility model by generating the fitness hypothesis testing and integrating it with the original similarity hypothesis testing, we hypothesize that the review with an attractive reviewer’s consumption photo is perceived as more helpful than the average-looking reviewer’s. Besides, the effect is moderated by consumers’ appearance self-esteem (ASE). With two online experiments, we found that the review with an attractive reviewer’s consumption photo is equivalently helpful compared to the review with an average-looking reviewer’s. Moreover, the attractive reviewer’s review is perceived as less helpful if the consumers are low in ASE. These findings provide evidence against the conventional wisdom that “what is beautiful is good” and point out that at certain condition beauty might backfire. Our conclusions are highly relevant to online retailers, third party websites, and online merchants.