A Review and Weight Analysis of Factors Affecting Helpfulness of Electronic Word-of-Mouth Communications

eWOM communications significantly affect consumer behaviour. Previous studies found that helpful online reviews affect information adoption, which results in intention to buy. As a result, large number of studies started investigating factors affecting helpfulness of eWOM communications. However, the mixed findings on the factors affecting perceived helpfulness of eWOM communications can lead to confusion for academics and marketing practitioners. Thus, the aim of this research is to synthesise findings from existing studies on eWOM communications by using weight analysis. This will help to investigate the predictive power of the independent variables on the dependent variable, by taking into consideration the number of times a relationship has been previously examined. The results of weight analysis showed that valence, emotions, length, source expertise, argument quality, rating, relevance, and source credibility are best predictors of eWOM helpfulness. There were also three promising predictors with a perfect weight of one such as volume, reputation of the reviewer, and certainty. Future steps of this study involve conducting meta-analysis, which will help strengthen results of weight analysis and develop a conceptual model for empirical evaluation of various factors affecting helpfulness of eWOM communications.