An evaluation of product review modalities for mobile phones

Research has shown that product reviews on the Internet not only support consumers when shopping, but also lead to increased sales for retailers. Recent approaches successfully use smart phones to directly relate products (e.g. via barcode or RFID) to corresponding reviews, making these available to consumers on the go. However, it is unknown what modality (star ratings/text/video) users consider useful for creating reviews and using reviews on their mobile phone, and how the preferred modalities are different from those on the Web. To shed light on this we conduct two experiments, one of them in a quasi-realistic shopping environment. The results indicate that, in contrast to the known approaches, stars and pre-structured text blocks should be implemented on mobile phones rather than long texts and videos. Users prefer less and rather well-aggregated product information while on the go. This accounts both for entering and, surprisingly, also for using product reviews.