Do online reviews help? The contingent effect of perceived crowdedness and gender for restaurant selection

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the impact of perceived usefulness of online reviews and crowd cues on restaurant selection. In addition, the authors also examine the moderating role of perceived crowding and gender in this process.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed hypotheses were tested with survey data (N = 200) collected from customers visiting full-service restaurants in Malaysia. The data were analyzed using SEM through Smart PLS.

Findings

The findings supported that the perceived usefulness of online reviews and perceived crowding have a positive effect on a consumer's purchase intentions, i.e. their decision of restaurant selection. Besides, a higher level of perceived crowding strengthens the relationship between the perceived usefulness of online reviews and their purchase intentions. This finding delineates that consumers prefer to dine in a crowded place with useful online reviews in an unfamiliar place. Finally, the results show that the effect of the usefulness of online reviews on purchase intentions does not vary with respect to gender (no significant contingent effect). However, the effect of perceived crowding varies with respect to gender – male customers have higher intentions to join crowded restaurants as compared to females.

Research limitations/implications

Limitation of this study is its cross-sectional research design; data were collected in a single time frame. Longitudinal research design can be used to get in-depth knowledge of this phenomenon. Secondly, a non-probability sampling technique was used in this study, future research can used probability sampling technique to enhance generalizability of the study. Moreover, this study focused on the human crowding aspect, future studies can cover both aspects of crowding (human crowding and spatial crowding) in retailing or other service sectors (Blut and Iyer, 2020).

Practical implications

This study has multiple practical implications.

Originality/value

This study extends the current research on usefulness of online reviews and perceived crowding by investigating its direct and conditional effects. Specifically, the authors contribute in extant research by explaining its differential effects for male and female customers, when they select which restaurants to dine.

Citation

Ali, M.A., Ting, D.H., Azeem, M.U. and Abbasi, A.Z. (2022), "Do online reviews help? The contingent effect of perceived crowdedness and gender for restaurant selection", EuroMed Journal of Business, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/EMJB-04-2022-0077