Decoding YouTube Video Reviews: Uncovering The Factors That Determine Video Review Helpfulness

Video reviews posted on YouTube are an emerging form of online reviews, which have the potential to be more helpful than textual reviews due to their visual and audible cues that deliver more vivid information about product features and specifications. With the availability of an enormous number of video reviews with unpredictable quality, it becomes challenging for consumers to find helpful reviews without consuming significant time and effort. In addition, YouTube does not provide a specific feature that indicates a review helpfulness similar to the one found on e-commerce websites. Consequently, consumers have to examine the characteristics of video reviews that are readily available on YouTube, evaluate them, and form a perception of whether a review is helpful or not. Despite the increasing popularity of YouTube?s video reviews, video reviews? helpfulness received inadequate attention in the literature. The antecedents of the helpfulness of online video reviews are still underinvestigated, and more research is needed to identify the characteristics that consumers depend upon to assess video review helpfulness. Furthermore, it is important to understand how consumers process the information they gain from these characteristics to form a perception of their helpfulness.