Article

Journal of Marketing
2020, Vol. 84(1) 52-65
Featuring Mistakes: The Persuasive Impact ª American Marketing Association 2019
Article reuse guidelines:

of Purchase Mistakes in Online Reviews sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022242919882428
journals.sagepub.com/home/jmx

Taly Reich and Sam J. Maglio

Abstract
Companies often feature positive consumer reviews on their websites and in their promotional materials in an attempt to
increase sales. However, little is known about which particular positive reviews companies should leverage to optimize sales.
Across four lab studies involving both hypothetical and real choices as well as field data from a retailer’s website (Sephora), the
authors find that consumers are more likely to purchase a product if it is recommended by a reviewer who has (vs. has not) made
a prior purchase mistake. The authors define a purchase mistake as a self-identified suboptimal decision whereby people purchase
a product that subsequently fails to meet a threshold level of expected performance. This persuasive advantage emerges because
consumers perceive reviewers who admit a purchase mistake as having more expertise than even reviewers whose purchase
experience has not been marred by mistakes. As a result, in marketers’ attempts to increase the persuasive influence of reviews
featured in their promotional materials, they may inadvertently decrease it by omitting the very information that would lead
consumers to be more likely to purchase recommended products.

Keywords
online reviews, persuasion, mistakes, expertise, word of mouth
Online supplement: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242919882428

Potential purchasers place a great deal of stock in product
reviews written by previous purchasers. More and more, these
product reviews are written, read, and evaluated online (Lips-
man et al. 2019). Online reviews gain as much trust as personal
recommendations for the majority of consumers (85%; Murphy
2017), and a glowing review motivates behavior more than
discounts and other offers (in the domains of durable goods
and electronics; Kats 2018). Consumers seem to want product
reviews (www.iperceptions.com), and firms seem happy to
offer such reviews on their websites, in their advertising, and
elsewhere (Arcillo 2011; Dellarocas 2003; Harper 2014; Raw-
lins 2011). Indeed, firms are increasingly engaging in efforts
around “review solicitation” and “online reputation manage-
ment,” incentivizing previous purchasers to write reviews in
exchange for discounted or free products.
As firms invest in, and consumers trust, online reviews, their
management has come to occupy a more prominent role in
marketing practice. Likewise, consideration of the review char-
acteristics exerting the most impact has come to occupy a more
prominent role in marketing theory. Positive reviews generally
boost sales while negative reviews hurt sales (Chevalier and
Mayzlin 2006; see also Ho-Dac, Carson, and Moore 2013), and
firms certainly opt to feature positive over negative reviews.
Packard and Berger (2017) presented evidence going one step
further, examining not simply whether the review was positive
but rather how the review conveyed its positivity: in explicitly
stating that they endorse the product, online reviews are more
likely to lead to purchases than those with more implicit posi-
tivity. This more nuanced examination of the content of online
reviews—going beyond the mere valence of the review—opens
the door to complementary approaches that ask not whether
reviewers like the product but what the reviewers say when
expressing their positivity or negativity, providing insight as
to how firms can optimize the persuasive influence of featuring
reviews. To illustrate how we propose to add to this growing
and important literature, consider the following two real
reviews from Amazon:
When my first Canon battery expired, I purchased a knock-off.
What a mistake. It lasted about 1/3 as long as the Canon. (Richard
J. Martin, review for a Canon battery)
The Canon battery is essential to have. Knock-off brands don’t
last a quarter as long as the Canon branded batteries. (“tac cat,”
review for a Canon battery)
Taly Reich is an Associate Professor in Marketing, Yale School of Management,
Yale University (email: taly.reich@yale.edu). Sam J. Maglio is an Associate
Professor in Marketing, Department of Management, and Department of
Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, and Rotman School of
Management (email: sam.maglio@utoronto.ca).
Reich and Maglio
Both of these reviews are positive, but which would—and
which should—Canon feature: Richard, who previously pur-
chased a product that turned out to be a mistake, or “tac cat,”
whose purchase experience was not marred by a mistake?
The present investigation develops a theoretical model in
proposing that admitting to having made a previous mistake
acts as a powerful cue through which potential purchasers infer
that the reviewer has gained significant expertise about a focal
product domain, which in turn increases the potential purcha-
sers’ likelihood of purchasing the product that the reviewer
recommends. In keeping with academic and applied norms,
we refer to the communication under consideration as a
“review” and the communicator as a “reviewer.” However,
defined formally, reviews need only describe the reviewer’s
experience, whereas “recommendations” advise on what to
do. Because we want to better understand how the content of
communication shapes its ability to persuade, the communica-
tions in our experiments will be presented as reviews yet
worded as recommendations that prescribe a certain course of
action to allow us to measure the degree to which our partici-
pants are persuaded (cf. Yeomans 2019).
Admitting Mistakes: Helpful or Harmful for
Persuasion?
Drawing from previous conceptual work, we define a purchase
mistake as a self-identified suboptimal decision whereby peo-
ple purchase a product that subsequently fails to meet a thresh-
old level of expected performance (Huei-Chen 2007; Laband
1986; Murphy and Enis 1986). Accordingly, we are not con-
cerned with mistakes of execution, whereby someone pur-
chases a product unintentionally or by accident. Rather, as an
example of a mistake in the form of a suboptimal decision, a
consumer might purchase a speaker system only to find that the
speakers do not perform as well as anticipated. Does this pur-
chase mistake—specifically, as admitted by the mistaken pur-
chaser—alter the willingness of other potential purchasers to
heed the advice of this mistaken purchaser?
One possibility is that admitting to having made a mistake
undermines other people’s inclination to follow any advice
from the mistaken reviewer. After all, admitting to a mistake
necessitates the making of a mistake, and mistakes may signal
incompetence: The mistaken reviewer was not sufficiently
thoughtful, intelligent, and/or knowledgeable to adequately
assess the relevant product specifications and make a good
purchase decision (Angelis et al. 2012; East, Hammond, and
Wright 2007; Wojnicki and Godes 2017). People often judge
others who make mistakes as incompetent and punish them
(e.g., Chesney and Su 2010; Gawande 1999; Kunda 1999; Par-
ker and Lawton 2003), so awareness of a reviewer’s previous
purchase mistake might predict an outcome resulting from an
inference of incompetence and akin to punishment: refusing to
take the reviewer’s advice.
Another possibility, which forms the foundation of our the-
oretical model, is that people do not necessarily attribute oth-
ers’ admission of a purchase mistake to incompetence (i.e., a
53
stable, permanent cause; Dweck and Leggett 1988; Hong,
Chiu, and Dweck 1995; Peterson et al. 1982). Rather, we the-
orize that a reviewer’s admitted purchase mistake signals a
temporary lack of knowledge, which is an unstable cause that
can change over time (Dweck and Leggett 1988; Hong, Chiu,
and Dweck 1995; Kupor, Reich, and Laurin 2018; Peterson
et al. 1982). Provided that a lack of knowledge is temporary
and, thus, fixable, we further propose that reviewers who admit
to having made a mistake will prove especially likely to be seen
as having rectified this lack of knowledge (i.e., to have gained
expertise since the purchase mistake; we conceptualize exper-
tise as a subcomponent of the broader construct of consumer
knowledge in keeping with Alba and Hutchinson [1987]).
These predictions derive from two lines of reasoning. First,
to echo and advance a point made previously, all mistake
admissions require a mistake to have occurred, but not all
mistakes that are made result in the admission of a mistake.
In other words, only a subset of mistaken purchasers will ever
admit to their mistakes, and even fewer mistaken purchasers
will admit to their mistakes in a public forum (like online
reviews). We propose that admitting to having made a mistake
inherently conveys that the mistaken reviewer has gained new
expertise. In the case of product purchases, the mistaken
reviewer, in admitting the mistake, must now know not only
that the original product has fallen short of initial expectations
(forming the basis of a negative assessment of the product) but
also that a different course of action (purchasing a different
product) would have proven better (for other opportunities to
learn from mistakes and signal that learning to others in online
reviews, see the “General Discussion” section). On top of this
(which applies even in admitting a mistake to oneself), we
reason that the public admission of having made a mistake
signals that mistaken reviewers are especially confident in their
current assessment (e.g., product review), resulting from new
expertise gained, insofar as they are willing to engage in the
costly behavior of conceding something negative about them-
selves. Conversely, when reviewers acknowledge switching
between brands without admitting a mistake, that reviewer’s
reason for switching remains more vague: admitting a mistake
signals a gaining of expertise, whereas no such admission could
result from any number of factors (e.g., promotions, stockouts,
variety seeking; Sun, Neslin, and Srinivasan 2003; Van Trijp,
Hoyer, and Inman 1996; Walter and Grabner 1975).
Second, we propose that the impact on others of a reviewer
admitting to a mistake also results from the experience of those
others (here, potential purchasers reading online reviews) in
making mistakes of their own. Everyone makes mistakes, and
a common response is to exert additional effort to learn from
the mistake to avoid making a similar mistake again in the
future (Argyris and Schon 1978; Carver and Scheier 2012;
Locke et al. 1981; Podsakoff and Farh 1989). Indeed, making
a mistake (vs. enjoying success) prompts greater subsequent
effort in the mistaken domain through the use of self-regulation
(Carver and Scheier 2012): the mistake signals a discrepancy
between a desired state (e.g., owning a good product) and the
current state (e.g., having made a bad purchase), which triggers
54
attempts to reduce the discrepancy and attain the desired goal
(Campion and Lord 1982; Podsakoff and Farh 1989). People
experience this effect consciously: they are often clearly aware
that making a mistake causes them to exert more effort in
similar situations in the future (Campion and Lord 1982). Just
as people themselves exert greater effort following a mistake
(vs. a success), they may believe that others exert greater effort
after their mistakes as well. Because people assume that greater
effort produces better outcomes (Kruger et al. 2004), we for-
mally predict the following:
H1: Consumers infer that reviewers who admit to having
made a previous purchase mistake (vs. reviewers who
mention having made a successful purchase) have more
expertise in the mistaken product domain.
We also predict that these inferences shape the persuasive
impact of reviews. This is because the perception of a
reviewer’s expertise is a primary determinant of whether peo-
ple purchase the products that a reviewer recommends: people
are more likely to follow the recommendations of those who
appear to have more expertise about the domain in which they
are making a recommendation (Packard and Berger 2017; Price
and Stone 2004; Wen, Tan, and Chang 2009; Woodside and
Davenport 1974). At this downstream level, we predict the
following:
H2: Consumers are more likely to purchase a product
recommended by reviewers who admit to having made
a previous purchase mistake (vs. reviewers who mention
having made a successful purchase).
H3: Consumer inferences of expertise for reviewers who
admit to having made a previous purchase mistake (vs.
reviewers who mention having made a successful pur-
chase) mediate the relationship between admission of a
mistake and likelihood of purchasing the recommended
product.
Our hypothesis development has centered on inferences of
expertise, but we do not propose that any admission of having
made a previous mistake always enhances perceived expertise
in a way that should increase advice taking. Rather, consumers
should be able to discern whether a review in which a mistake
was admitted presents compelling evidence that the reviewer
has learned from that mistake. As an implication of this pre-
dicted sensitivity on the part of consumers, we propose—as a
boundary condition to our main effect—that consumers should
be more likely to follow the purchase-related advice of
reviewers who admit to having made a previous mistake only
when the mistake conveys that the reviewer has gained exper-
tise since making the mistake. Specifically, we theorize that the
expertise only should be seen as strengthened in the domain in
which the reviewer made the mistake. Accordingly, potential
purchasers should heed the mistaken reviewer’s advice for
products in that domain but, provided the expertise does not
transfer readily across domains, not for products in any other
domain. Formally, we predict the following:
Journal of Marketing 84(1)
H4: Consumers are more likely to purchase a product
recommended by reviewers who admit to having made
a previous purchase mistake (vs. reviewers who mention
having made a successful purchase) in the same domain,
whereas consumers are no more likely to purchase a prod-
uct recommended by reviewers who admit to having
made a previous purchase mistake (vs. reviewers who
mention having made a successful purchase) in a different
domain.
Research Overview
Study 1 tests our predictions that people infer mistaken
reviewers to have more expertise in the product domain in
which the mistake was made (H1), that purchase advice is more
likely to be accepted from a mistaken reviewer (H2), and that
the former accounts for the latter (H3). Study 1 tests these
predictions using an incentive-compatible design, and Study
2 tests these same predictions (H1–H3) but by assessing inferred
expertise with a different measure in the interest of providing a
robustness check. Study 3 manipulates not only admission of a
mistake but also the domain alignment of the mistake, intro-
ducing a key moderator to provide evidence for the boundary
condition articulated in H4. Study 4 introduces several mod-
ifications to the general design of Studies 1–3 to provide
evidence for a robust effect relating mention of making a
mistake to acceptance of purchase advice (H2) for a real pur-
chase decision. Finally, Study 5 examines mistaken
reviewers’ persuasive impact in the field by examining real
reviews from a popular website (Sephora). Thus, these data
suggest that the persuasive power of mistakes is sufficiently
robust to emerge in the noisy real world.
The inclusion of orthogonal experimental factors in these
designs indirectly speaks to several alternative explanations
that we discuss in turn, and a posttest of Study 3 directly mea-
sures other inferences consumers might make of reviewers who
admit mistakes, finding that they do not account for the effect
observed throughout the present investigation. We identify sev-
eral such possibilities for these findings. First, a positive review
for a focal product that includes admission of a mistake
acknowledges the existence of both well-performing and
underperforming brands. This may result in a brand compari-
son effect, whereby any mention of poor performance for one
brand makes the other, well-performing brand look better (con-
sistent with the effectiveness of comparative advertising; Gre-
wal et al. 1997). A second, related explanation might hold not
for perception of the two brands but for perception of the
reviewer: in mentioning the two brand performances, observers
might infer that the mistaken reviewer has more carefully con-
sidered both the positives and the negatives of the focal alter-
natives. Third, a review that includes the admission of a
mistake necessarily includes both positive information (a
favorable review for the focal product) and negative informa-
tion (that the previous purchase was a mistake), in contrast to
the unilateral positivity of the successful purchase conditions.
As a result, perhaps exposure to any negative information in a
Reich and Maglio
review orients consumers to potential losses, looming larger
than potential gains and prompting them to accept more readily
the advice in a review (e.g., as the result of risk aversion:
Kahneman and Tversky 1979). Should this be the case, then
mention of any mistake might strengthen the tendency to
accept the advice in a review. These alternative explanations
would predict that consumers should still be persuaded by a
reviewer who first makes a mistake in one product domain and
then makes a successful product purchase in a different
domain. Instead, we predict and test in Study 3 that admission
of a mistake will change only inferred expertise in the same,
focal product domain, rendering moot advice regarding other
product domains (H4). Separately, reviewers who admit mis-
takes might be perceived differently on multiple different
inferred characteristics by observers, including specific person-
ality traits and as having global expertise that extends across
different product domains. Accordingly, a posttest of Study 3
measures several such potential inferences, finding no connec-
tion between them and the admission of a mistake.
While we designed Study 3 with the goal of speaking against
several alternative psychological explanations for our effect,
we designed Study 4 with the goal of speaking to practitioners
interested in the breadth by which our effect might be applied.
For this reason, Study 4 departs from Studies 1–3 in subtle but
meaningful ways. First, it presents not a single review but a
set of ten reviews in which we either did or did not embed a
single review in which the reviewer mentions making a pre-
vious purchase mistake. Second, rather than reviews for ficti-
tious brands or brands with which participants ostensibly have
little familiarity, Study 4 presents reviews for a known brand.
Using a known brand facilitated our third change: having
participants make a consequential choice. To compliment the
consequential setup in Study 1 (in which one participant
received a chosen outcome), all participants in Study 4
received the outcome they choose. Thus, Study 4 attests to
the robustness of our effect in tandem with the large-scale
data-mining approach adopted in Study 5.
Study 1
In an incentive-compatible context, Study 1 tests H1–H3: con-
sumers infer that a reviewer has more expertise about a product
category if the reviewer admits to previously making a mistake
in purchasing a product from that category than if the reviewer
does not, and this inference of expertise accounts for the greater
tendency of consumers to choose in line with this reviewer’s
advice.
Method
One hundred sixty participants (mean age ¼ 35 years; 39%
male) from a large East Coast U.S. university participated in
a laboratory study in exchange for course credit. This study was
run as part of a session containing unrelated surveys from
different researchers. All participants read that, as additional
compensation for their participation in the lab session, they
55
would be entered into a lottery for a prize. Participants further
read that if they won the lottery, they would receive a pair of
headphones and that they would choose which one of two sets
of headphones they preferred to receive as their prize. All
participants then viewed information about the two sets of
headphones, which were called Orbin and Raymour (see Web
Appendix A). They also read a consumer review that was
(ostensibly) the most recently submitted review for these head-
phones. Specifically, participants saw that the most recently
submitted review was written by a consumer named Sam. Par-
ticipants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a
mistaken reviewer condition or a successful reviewer condi-
tion. In both conditions, Sam’s review recommended the Orbin
headphones (purchased most recently) and also described a
previous purchase of headphones, providing his experience
with both sets of headphones in terms of general evaluation
as well as performance on the same particular attribute (a sen-
sor). In the mistaken reviewer condition, Sam noted that this
previous purchase was a mistake:
A couple years ago when I was searching for the last pair of
headphones that I bought, I ended up buying the Nidec VIA
headphones, and that was a mistake—it turned out that the
headphones had a bad type of sensor and therefore did not work
well. I recently decided to upgrade my headphones to a newer
model, and I considered both the Orbin and Raymour head-
phones. I chose the Orbin headphones. I’ve had them for a
month, and they are good—they have great features, including
a good type of sensor, and they work well. I would recommend
them. (Sam K.)
Conversely, in the successful reviewer condition, Sam noted
that this previous decision was successful:
A couple years ago when I was searching for the last pair of
headphones that I bought, I ended up buying the Nidec VIA
headphones, and that was a good choice—it turned out that the
headphones had a good type of sensor and therefore worked
well. I recently decided to upgrade my headphones to a newer
model, and I considered both the Orbin and Raymour head-
phones. I chose the Orbin headphones. I’ve had them for a
month, and they are good—they have great features, including
a good type of sensor, and they work well. I would recommend
them. (Sam K.)
Next, participants were asked whether they preferred to
receive the Orbin or the Raymour headphones if they won the
lottery. The instructions emphasized that this decision was real.
Participants entered their decision by selecting a radio button
that was labeled either with “Orbin” or “Raymour.” They also
rated how much they perceived that the reviewer had learned
about how to choose good headphones (1 ¼ “Not much at all,”
and 7 ¼ “A lot”). At the end of the study, participants were
debriefed (i.e., they were informed that the lottery was real but
was for a pair of Sony headphones rather than for the brands
that they read about in the study).
56
Perceived
Learning
.99*** .06**
Mistaken vs. Consumer
Successful Reviewer (.08) .14* Choice
Figure 1. Mediation model in Study 1.
Notes: The path coefficients are unstandardized betas. Values in parentheses
indicate the effect of condition on the dependent variable after controlling for
the mediator. 95% CI for the indirect effect ¼ [.1614, .8766].
*p < .05.
**p < .01.
***p < .001.
Results and Discussion
As we predicted, participants more often chose the recom-
mended headphones when they were recommended by a mis-
taken reviewer (93.1%) than when they were recommended by
a successful reviewer (79.5%; w2(d.f. ¼ 1, N ¼ 160) ¼ 5.87, p
¼ .015; Cohen’s d ¼ .390). Furthermore, participants perceived
that the mistaken reviewer learned more about how to choose
good headphones (M ¼ 5.96, SD ¼ 1.01) than the successful
reviewer (M ¼ 4.97, SD ¼ 1.39; t(158) ¼ 5.07, p < .001,
Cohen’s d ¼ .811).
We hypothesized that the mistaken (vs. successful) reviewer
more strongly influenced participants’ real choices because
participants inferred that the mistaken reviewer gained more
expertise about how to choose good headphones. Consistent
with this prediction, a mediation analysis with 5,000 bootstraps
revealed that perceived learning mediated the effect of condi-
tion on participants’ real choices (95% confidence interval [CI]
for the indirect effect ¼ [.1614, .8766]; see Figure 1).
In summary, Study 1 documents the persuasive power of
mistakes in an incentive-compatible context. Moreover, Study
1 suggests that this power arises because people infer that a
purchaser who makes a mistake subsequently gains more
expertise—assessed here in the form of learning—about how
to identify a good product in that domain than a purchaser
who originally chose successfully. Here, the mistaken
reviewer identified the previous purchase as a mistake on the
basis of its performance on one particular attribute (a sensor),
creating potential confounds (e.g., reviewer evaluation of this
highly technical attribute leading to observer inferences of
preexisting expertise) that we address in our subsequent stud-
ies by having the mistaken reviewers concede only that they
made previous purchase mistakes without detailing the rea-
sons for this conclusion.
Study 2
Study 1 provides, in a consequential choice setting, evidence
consistent with the prediction that consumers are more per-
suaded by reviewers who have (vs. have not) previously made
Journal of Marketing 84(1)
a purchase mistake through an inference that those reviewers
have learned more. As we have noted, we believe that an
inference of learning implies the gaining of new consumer
knowledge in the form of expertise, though Study 1 assessed
only the former. Thus, in Study 2, we test the same hypotheses
as Study 1 (H1–H3) using a modified empirical approach. Spe-
cifically, we utilize a hypothetical scenario design to comple-
ment the incentive-compatible design of Study 1, and we
measure our proposed mediator by asking whether perceivers
judge mistaken reviewers to have more knowledge in the rel-
evant domain compared with successful reviewers.
Method
Eighty participants (mean age ¼ 34 years; 63% male) in an
online participant pool participated in a study in exchange for
monetary payment. All participants imagined that they lived in
Seattle and were looking for a local florist. They further ima-
gined that they had narrowed their choices down to two local
artisan floral shops that served only the local Seattle area—
FlowersNow and FreshBlooms. Participants viewed informa-
tion about the two floral shops (Web Appendix B) and ima-
gined that they looked at the websites of the two florists to help
them make their decision. On the FreshBlooms website, parti-
cipants saw that there was a review written by a consumer
named Sam. In both conditions, Sam’s review recommended
FreshBlooms and also described a previous choice he had made
between two florists when he lived in a different state. In the
mistaken reviewer condition, Sam noted that this previous
decision was a mistake:
I just moved to Seattle from Boston. When I was in Boston, I
decided to get flowers once from a local florist in Boston (which
sells flowers only in the Boston area). That was a mistake—the
florist I chose was not a good florist. Now that I’ve moved to
Seattle, I wanted to get flowers for my housewarming party. My
final choice came down to flowers from FlowersNow or Fresh-
Blooms. After looking into both options, it was clear to me that
FreshBlooms is the better florist. I decided to get flowers from
FreshBlooms, and that was a great choice. I recommend Fresh-
Blooms! (Sam K.)
Conversely, in the successful reviewer condition, Sam noted
that this previous decision was successful:
I just moved to Seattle from Boston. When I was in Boston, I
decided to get flowers once from a local florist in Boston (which
sells flowers only in the Boston area). That was a good choice—the
florist I chose was a good florist. Now that I’ve moved to Seattle, I
wanted to get flowers for my housewarming party. My final choice
came down to flowers from FlowersNow or FreshBlooms. After
looking into both options, it was clear to me that FreshBlooms is
the better florist. I decided to get flowers from FreshBlooms, and
that was a great choice. I recommend FreshBlooms! (Sam K.)
Next, participants reported whether they would choose to
buy flowers from FreshBlooms or FlowersNow. They also
Reich and Maglio
Perceived
Knowledge
.84** .14***
Mistaken vs. Consumer
Successful Reviewer (.18) .29** Choice
Figure 2. Mediation model in Study 2.
Notes: The path coefficients are unstandardized betas. Values in parentheses
indicate the effect of condition on the dependent variable after controlling for
the mediator. 95% CI for the indirect effect ¼ [.0545, .2834].
*p < .05.
**p < .01.
***p < .001.
completed a two-item index of their perceptions of the
reviewer’s knowledge. Specifically, they indicated how much
knowledge the reviewer now had about how to choose a good
florist and how much knowledge the reviewer had about
whether to buy flowers at FreshBlooms or FlowersNow. Parti-
cipants responded to each question on separate seven-point
scales (1 ¼ “Not a lot,” and 7 ¼ “A lot”). We combined the
items into an index of perceived knowledge (r ¼ .53, p < .001).
We predicted that the mistaken (vs. successful) reviewer
would more strongly influence participants’ choices because
participants would perceive the mistaken reviewer as more
knowledgeable.
Results and Discussion
As we predicted, participants more often chose the recom-
mended florist when it was recommended by a mistaken
reviewer (90.9%) than when it was recommended by a success-
ful reviewer (61.7%; w2(d.f. ¼ 1, N ¼ 80) ¼ 8.54, p ¼ .003,
Cohen’s d ¼.691). Furthermore, participants perceived that the
mistaken reviewer had more knowledge (M ¼ 4.68, SD ¼ 1.27)
than the successful reviewer (M ¼ 3.84, SD ¼ 1.19; t(78) ¼
3.03, p ¼ .003, Cohen’s d ¼ .683). To test the mediating role of
perceived knowledge in determining the effect of condition on
choice, we conducted a mediation analysis with 5,000 boot-
straps. As we hypothesized, perceived knowledge mediated the
effect of condition on choice (95% CI for the indirect effect ¼
[.0545, .2834]; see Figure 2).
Along with Study 1, Study 2 provides evidence for the per-
suasive power of mistakes. Moreover, in Study 2, we establish
that this power arises because consumers infer that a reviewer
who admits to a mistake has more knowledge than an equiva-
lent reviewer who originally chose successfully. Having docu-
mented a robust effect in Study 2, in Study 3 we probe a
potential moderator of the persuasive power of mistakes.
Study 3
Our theoretical model proposes that the persuasive power of
reviews featuring mistakes comes from an inference that the
57
reviewer has significant expertise (H3). As a result, any infor-
mation that undermines the tendency for observers to infer that
the reviewer has this expertise should, in turn, undermine the
extent to which the review is persuasive. Thus, to provide
convergent evidence, Study 3 utilizes a moderation-of-
process design (Spencer, Zanna, and Fong 2005) that manip-
ulates not only the admission of a mistake but also an
additional experimental factor designed to compromise the
inferred expertise of the reviewer, which also addresses
potential alternative accounts. Specifically, if the persuasive
power of mistakes is due to the belief that reviewers’ purchase
mistakes signal that the reviewers have gained more expertise
about the product domain, then mistaken reviewers’ recom-
mendations will be more persuasive only when the reviewers’
purchase mistakes occur in the same product category as their
focal review (H4). We tested this prediction in Study 3 by
presenting participants with a review from either a mistaken
or successful reviewer, in keeping with the designs of Studies
1 and 2, but departing from those studies in that the previous
purchase was in either the same or a different product cate-
gory as the review.
Method
Two hundred ninety-nine participants (mean age ¼ 32 years;
49% male) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) com-
pleted an online study in exchange for monetary payment.
The participants’ task was to decide which one of two in-
ceiling speaker systems they would prefer to purchase: the
Mikana XPI in-ceiling speaker system or the Rokana SX2 in-
ceiling speaker system. Participants viewed the specifications
of the two speaker systems (which were identical to the spec-
ifications of the headphones described in Study 1, as the
specifications could reasonably apply to both product cate-
gories; see Web Appendix A) and read two reviews written
by a consumer named Taylor. Both reviews were ostensibly
on a website that featured consumer reviews for different
electronics. The focal review, which was the same in all
conditions, noted that Taylor purchased a Mikana XPI
speaker system and recommended it. However, the content
of the nonfocal review differed by condition. Specifically,
participants were randomly assigned to read that Taylor had
previously purchased a bookshelf speaker (i.e., a product in
the same domain as the focal product) or a printer (i.e., a
product in a different domain from the focal product) and
that this decision was either a mistake or a success (see Web
Appendix C). These manipulations produced a 2 (nonfocal
product type: speakers vs. printer)  2 (nonfocal review type:
mistake vs. success) design.
After participants viewed Taylor’s reviews (both reviews
were explicitly noted as written by Taylor), they decided
whether they would purchase the Mikana XPI or the Rokana
SX2 speaker system. Participants entered their decision by
selecting a radio button that was labeled either with “Mikana
XPI” or “Rokana SX2.”
58 Journal of Marketing 84(1)

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics in the Posttest of Study 3.

Speaker Printer
DV Speaker Mistake Success Printer Mistake Success Analysis (Interaction)

Discerning 4.21 (1.49) 4.13 (1.40) 4.53 (1.31) 4.18 (1.40) F(1, 346) ¼ .83, p ¼ .362
Integrity 4.76 (1.18) 4.48 (.97) 4.78 (.90) 4.85 (1.10) F(1, 346) ¼ 2.52, p ¼ .114
Liking 4.27 (1.34) 4.23 (1.33) 4.52 (1.19) 4.55 (1.28) F(1, 346) ¼ .06, p ¼ .810
Similar 5.56 (1.45) 5.76 (1.16) 6.17 (.95) 6.15 (1.02) F(1, 346) ¼ .73, p ¼ .393
Surprise 4.66 (1.22) 4.60 (1.27) 4.89 (1.17) 4.80 (1.23) F(1, 346) ¼ .01, p ¼ .930
Expertise Index 4.64 (1.13) 4.31 (.99) 4.59 (1.09) 4.74 (1.01) F(1, 346) ¼ 4.43, p ¼ .036
Notes: Statistics in parentheses are standard deviations.

Results We recruited a separate sample of MTurk participants (N ¼

350; mean age ¼ 38 years; 50% male), who were randomly
We conducted a binary logistic regression using nonfocal
assigned to view the same information presented to participants
review type (mistake vs. success), nonfocal product type
in the main study. Posttest participants then completed mea-
(speakers vs. printer), and their interaction to predict partici-
sures, presented in a random order, assessing their perceptions
pants’ choices. The regression revealed an interaction on
of the extent to which Taylor was discerning and had high
choice (b ¼ 2.68, z ¼ 2.67, p ¼ .008). In a conceptual replica-
integrity, the extent to which they liked Taylor and were similar
tion of the previous studies, when the reviewer had made a
to Taylor, and the extent to which Taylor’s reviews were sur-
previous speaker purchase, participants who read that the pre-
prising. In addition, participants completed a two-item index of
vious purchase was a mistake chose the recommended speaker
their perceptions of Taylor’s expertise (adapted from Packard
more often (97.4%) than participants who read about a success-
and Berger 2017). Specifically, they indicated how much of an
ful purchase (87.0%; b ¼ 1.72, z ¼ 2.17, p ¼ .030, odds ratio ¼
expert they thought Taylor was about speakers and how knowl-
5.597). Conversely, when the reviewer had made a previous
edgeable they thought Taylor was about speakers. Similar to
printer purchase, we found no such effect (mistake ¼ 86.5%,
Packard and Berger (2017), we combined these items into an
success ¼ 94.4%; b ¼ .96, z ¼ 1.56, p ¼ .119).
index of perceived expertise that correlated at a level (r ¼ .66,
p < .001) commensurate with their original work (r ¼ .53).
Participants indicated their responses on separate seven-point
Posttest scales (1¼ “Not at all,” and 7 ¼ “Very much”).
As we expected, the interaction between nonfocal product
If a mistake’s persuasive power arises because admitting a
type and nonfocal review type was significant for perceived
mistake signals some broadly positive character trait (e.g., the
expertise (F(1, 346) ¼ 4.43, p ¼ .036). When the reviewer had
integrity to admit one’s mistakes publicly), then mistaken
made a previous speaker purchase, the mistaken reviewer was
reviewers should be more persuasive regardless of the domain
perceived as more expert (M ¼ 4.64, SD ¼ 1.13) compared
of their mistake. Thus, we conducted a posttest to establish
with the successful reviewer (M ¼ 4.31, SD ¼ .99; Fisher’s
whether mentioning a mistake—either in the same domain or
least significant difference: p ¼ .043; Cohen’s d ¼ .311). In
a different domain as the focal product—alters how consumers
contrast, when the reviewer had made a previous printer pur-
perceive the mistaken reviewer. The design of the posttest
chase, there were no differences in perceived expertise between
mirrored that of the main study, save for a switch from measur-
the mistaken reviewer (M ¼ 4.59, SD ¼ 1.09) and the success-
ing choice to measuring several such potential perceptions.
ful reviewer (M ¼ 4.74, SD ¼ 1.01; F < 1). Participants’
Specifically, the posttest began with participants’ assessment
perceptions of the extent to which Taylor was discerning, had
of the extent to which a mistaken reviewer is discerning, has
integrity, was likeable, and was similar to themselves, as well
integrity, is likeable, and is similar to the self. The posttest
as the extent to which their mistake was surprising did not
also measured whether the mistake was surprising, because
differ as a function of product type and review type (Fs(1,
surprise can orient attention to a focal piece of information
346) < 2.52, ps > .114; see Table 1).
and increase persuasion as a result (Baker and Petty 1994).
Finally, in the interest of presenting evidence not only against
these alternative explanations but also in support of our pro-
posed mechanism, participants rated the perceived expertise Discussion
of the mistaken reviewer to conceptually replicate the media- These results are inconsistent with the possibility that a mis-
tion results from Studies 1 and 2. We examined these issues take’s persuasive power arises because they signal some broad
using a posttest rather than in the main study to avoid potential character trait that enhances discernment, integrity, likeability,
demand effects from asking participants about both their pur- or perceived similarity to the observer. Theoretically, such
chase intentions and their perceptions of the mistaken character traits should have been signaled just as well by a
reviewer in the same study. printer-related mistake as by a speaker-related mistake, in
Reich and Maglio
which case we would not have found the predicted interaction.
Moreover, Study 3’s posttest confirmed that Taylor was per-
ceived equivalently on each of these dimensions regardless of
whether he made a prior mistake purchasing a printer or
speakers. Study 3, however, does not speak to one remaining
potential inference: that the mistaken reviewer had high
expertise from the outset instead of gaining expertise.
Although at face value this possibility might seem inconsis-
tent with making a mistake in the first place, we conducted a
supplementary study (reported in Web Appendix D) to
demonstrate that the persuasive power of mistakes arises not
because people assume that a mistaken reviewer had a lot of
knowledge to begin with to discern their mistake (and not
because of any other variable that consumers may assume
plays into reviewers’ ability or willingness to acknowledge
a mistake, or because of some other difference in the content
of mistake- vs. success-based reviews), but rather because
they assume that a mistaken reviewer has acquired more
expertise as a result of their mistake.
Study 4
The first three studies identified the psychological foundation
underlying why mentioning a mistake causes consumers to
place more credence in the advice of those reviewers. In the
pursuit of this objective, the first three studies prioritized inter-
nal validity over external validity; Study 4 shifts its balance to
consider the impact of mistaken reviewers in more ecologically
valid contexts. While considering a purchase, consumers reg-
ularly read not only a single review in isolation but, rather,
multiple reviews to form an overall conclusion. To capture this
reality, participants see not one but ten reviews for a focal
product in Study 4; two experimental conditions vary whether
one review, embedded within that set of ten, mentions a prior
purchase mistake. Furthermore, would the effect of mentioning
mistakes extend from the fictitious or generic brands used in
our previous studies to established, known brands presumably
higher in brand equity? Study 4 considers this robustness issue
by using a real brand (Altoids mints) as the focal product under
consideration. Finally, as this study aims to provide the clearest
point of direct application, it requires all participants to make a
real purchase choice. Whereas the choice in Study 1 was
incentive-compatible insofar as one participant would ulti-
mately receive the chosen outcome, incentive compatibility is
strengthened in Study 4, which asks all participants to make a
real purchase decision. We predicted that mention of a mistake
would still prove powerful under this more naturalistic set of
conditions.
Method
Two hundred forty-nine participants (mean age ¼ 35 years;
43% male) from a large U.S. East Coast university participated
in a session of laboratory studies in exchange for monetary
payment. This study was run as part of a session containing
unrelated surveys from different researchers. All participants
59
were told that they would be asked to read several reviews of
spearmint mints made by a brand of which we presumed parti-
cipants to have at least some knowledge (Altoids) and then
asked to make a choice. Participants were randomly assigned
to one of two conditions: a mistake condition or a no-mistake
condition. All participants viewed a total of ten reviews that
were presented in a random order. Nine of these reviews were
identical between the experimental conditions and were taken
from actual Altoids spearmint mints reviews posted on Ama-
zon (including star rating, title of review, and review text; for
all reviews, see Web Appendix E). We varied the content of
the remaining review to either include a reference to the
reviewer having made a previous mistake (mistake condition)
or not (no-mistake condition). After reading the reviews, par-
ticipants were told that as additional compensation for the
survey session, they could choose to receive either one pack
of Altoids spearmint mints or one additional dollar added to
their payment. Participants entered their decision by selecting
a radio button that was labeled either with “Altoids Spearmint
Mints” or “One Additional Dollar,” and the researcher then
provided the participant with their chosen form of additional
compensation.
Results and Discussion
A chi-square analysis revealed that participants reading a set of
reviews that contained one review in which the reviewer men-
tioned making a mistake were more likely to choose the Altoids
spearmint mints over additional monetary compensation
(34.9%) than were participants for whom the provided set of
reviews did not contain a review mentioning a mistake (22.0%;
w2(d.f. ¼ 1, N ¼ 249) ¼ 5.14, p ¼ .023; Cohen’s d ¼ .290).
Thus, as we predicted, even when the review mentioning a
mistake has only a minority presence (i.e., comprises one
review out of ten), it still exerts an effect powerful enough to
change consumer choice. Notably, the behavior under consid-
eration here closely reflects real consumer decision making, as
our participants learned about a widely known brand and sub-
sequently made a consequential choice (between receiving the
branded product or receiving additional money). These results
attest to the strength and robustness of our effect, which we
extend in Study 5 to a different naturalistic context.
Study 5
In our final study, we test the external validity of our findings
by examining whether the persuasive power of mistakes is
sufficiently robust to emerge in the noisy real world. To that
end, we examine consumer reviews on Sephora’s online retail
platform. Conveniently, the Sephora review platform has a
feature whereby readers can rate whether reviews are helpful,
which is indicative of whether they are persuasive (see Baek,
Ahn, and Choi 2012; Mudambi and Schuff 2010; see also the
pilot test in the “Results and Discussion” subsection of this
study). We predict that reviews referencing a purchase mistake
60
will be linked to consumers finding the review more helpful (as
measured by reader-provided ratings of helpfulness).
Method
The Sephora website includes six product categories (makeup,
skincare, hair, tools and brushes, fragrance, and bath and body).
The category to be scraped (hair) was randomly chosen and,
after determining 40 products as the maximum number able to
be scraped within a reasonable time frame, 40 haircare products
were randomly chosen. Within that subset, we scraped all
reviews starting in August 2017 until the time of scraping
(December 24, 2018). For the entire resulting set of 5,727
reviews, we used a series of indicator variables to tag whether
each review mentioned a previous purchase mistake. Specifi-
cally, the (case-insensitive) indicators were: mistak: the string
“mistak” is in the review; mistook: the string “mistook” is in
the review; my_bad: the phrase “my bad” or “my error” is in
the review; I_wrong: the word “I” is within 35 characters of a
word starting with “wrong” (without a period, question mark,
or exclamation mark in between, which are proxies for sen-
tence divisions); my_fault: the word “my” is within 35 charac-
ters of the word “fault” (again, without a period, question mark,
or exclamation mark in between); and our_fault: the word
“our” is within 35 characters of the word “fault” (again, with-
out a period, question mark, or exclamation mark in between).
This tagging led to the identification of 502 reviews referen-
cing a prior mistake. Two independent judges (interjudge relia-
bility: r ¼ .92) reviewed these 502 reviews, tagging 86% of
them to be about mistakes in choice.1 To equate sample sizes,
we then randomly selected 502 reviews that did not reference a
mistake from the remaining scraped data set, resulting in a data
set of 1,004 reviews.
Results and Discussion
Pilot test. Previous research has suggested that helpfulness votes
are a proxy for persuasiveness (Baek, Ahn, and Choi 2012;
Mudambi and Schuff 2010). We conducted our own pilot test
to further verify this conclusion. That is, we tested whether
consumers rate a review as helpful when it guides their pur-
chase decision. To that end, we recruited 72 participants from
MTurk who reported that they had previously rated an Amazon
review as helpful or unhelpful. We then asked them to describe
(in an open-response box) the factors that influence their deci-
sions about whether to rate a review as helpful or unhelpful. On
the next survey page, we showed them the description that they
had written and asked them whether they wrote that they were
more likely to rate an Amazon review as helpful when the
review made them want to follow the reviewer’s advice (a
measure of persuasion; Berry, Butler, and De Rosis 2005;
Burns 1991; Magee and Kalyanaraman 2010). A chi-square
1
A supplementary analysis on only this reduced set of reviews from the
manual coders yielded the same pattern of results as those presented in the
main text. Web Appendix F presents this regression analysis.
Journal of Marketing 84(1)
analysis revealed that most people (72.2%) reported that they
rate a review as helpful when it is persuasive (w2 (d.f. ¼ 1) ¼
14.22, p < .001). Thus, consistent with prior literature (Baek,
Ahn, and Choi 2012; Mudambi and Schuff 2010), reviews’
helpfulness ratings serve as a proxy for their persuasive power.
Primary analyses. We computed a measure of each review’s
persuasive power by subtracting the number of unhelpful votes
from helpful votes associated with each review and dividing
that by the total number of votes (helpful  unhelpful)/(helpful
þ unhelpful). This measure served as our dependent variable,
and it ranged from 1 to 1 (M ¼ .078, SD ¼ .329; Mhelpful ¼
3.672, SD ¼ 16.621; Munhelpful ¼ .774, SD ¼ 3.285). As a first
step, we regressed this helpfulness measure on whether the
review referenced a mistake (1 ¼ no, 1 ¼ yes). As we pre-
dicted, the regression revealed that reviews referencing a mis-
take (vs. those not referencing a mistake) were deemed more
helpful (b ¼ .076, SE ¼ .010, p < .001). Next, we regressed the
helpfulness measure on whether the review referenced a mis-
take (1 ¼ no, 1 ¼ yes) and the following control measures (all
continuous control variables were mean-centered): review
length (number of words), valence of review (1 ¼ negative,
0 ¼ both positive and negative, 1 ¼ positive; coded by two
independent judges with high interjudge reliability: r ¼ .93),
star rating (1–5), explicit recommendation (1 ¼ no, 1 ¼ yes;
feature included on the Sephora website), loyalty program
membership tier (with higher numbers indicating more dollars
spent at Sephora in a calendar year; 1 ¼ “Insider,” 2 ¼ “VIB,”
and 3 ¼ “Rouge”), reviewer expertise (with higher numbers
indicating more reviews posted to the Sephora site; 1 ¼
“Rookie,” 2 ¼ “Rising Star,” 3 ¼ “Go Getter,” and 4 ¼
“Boss”), number of images uploaded with the review, explicit
mention of another brand in the review (1 ¼ no, 1 ¼ yes;
coded by two independent judges with high interjudge relia-
bility, r ¼ .94), and date of review (calculated as number of
days since December 30, 1899 on the Gregorian calendar). The
regression revealed a significant effect of review length on
helpfulness, such that longer reviews were found to be more
helpful (b ¼ .001, SE < .000, p < .001). None of the other
control variables had a significant effect on helpfulness (ps >
.304). Most relevant to our focal theorizing, the regression also
revealed that reviews referencing a mistake (vs. those not refer-
encing a mistake) were deemed more helpful in the full analysis
controlling for review length, valence of review, star rating,
explicit recommendation, loyalty program membership,
reviewer expertise, number of images uploaded with the
review, explicit mention of another brand in the review, and
date of review (b ¼ .056, SE ¼ .014, p < .001; see Table 2).2
In summary, Study 5 provides evidence that Sephora users
rate reviews that mention a purchase mistake as more helpful.
2
For descriptive statistics of the variables included in Table 2, see Web
Appendix G. For a regression analysis on raw number of helpfulness votes,
see Web Appendix H. For a discussion and regression analysis of an extended
model that predicts a Sephora-specific outcome (i.e., the number of “loves”
included on the product page on the Sephora website), see Web Appendix I.
Reich and Maglio 61

Table 2. Results of Regression Analysis on Helpfulness Index for not been marred by mistakes. We integrate the persuasion and
Study 5. attribution theory literature streams to illuminate a powerful
Predictor b SE t p
factor that shapes the persuasive impact of consumer reviews
on purchase decisions.
(Constant) .083 .024 3.456 .001**
Mistake reference .056 .014 .171 4.136 .000***
Number of words .001 .000 .144 4.291 .000*** Alternative Explanations
Valence of review .018 .017 .044 1.027 .305
Star rating .005 .017 .023 .305 .761
In addition to illuminating the persuasive impact of mistake
Explicit recommendation .029 .028 .077 1.052 .293 makers and the mechanism underlying this phenomenon, we
Loyalty program member .014 .013 .035 1.109 .268 also examined several alternative explanations. Merely com-
Reviewer expertise .191 .230 .026 .828 .408 paring two brands proved insufficient to evoke our effect in
Number of uploaded images .023 .035 .021 .648 .517 Study 3, which instead provided evidence consistent with H4,
Mention of another brand .011 .020 .017 .552 .581 which posited domain dependence. The posttest of Study 3
Date of review 2.672E-5 .000 .009 .236 .813 provided further evidence inconsistent with the possibility
Notes: The R-square of the simple model (without controls) is .053; the that inferences regarding mistaken reviewers being discern-
R-square of the full model with controls is .080. ing, having integrity, being likeable, and being similar to the
*p < .05. message recipient contribute to the phenomenon we docu-
**p < .01.
***p < .001. ment, nor did potential surprise from admitting a mistake.
We note that these findings do not preclude the possibility
that some types of purchase mistakes could alter perceptions
Even after including numerous controls, the relationship of reviewers (for these or other traits) in a manner that would
between mention of a mistake and review helpfulness still affect their persuasive power. Nevertheless, the fact that the
holds. We targeted helpfulness as a meaningful construct of proposed phenomenon emerged—for both purchase decisions
consideration, as our pilot test and previous research indicate in the main study and inference of expertise in the posttest of
that a helpful review is a persuasive review, and marketing Study 3—when the reviewers were perceived equivalently on
managers interested in increasing sales begin with the goal of these dimensions suggests that these accounts are insufficient
persuading consumers to purchase their products. Thus, these to explain our findings.
results underscore the applied relevance of mentioning mis- Furthermore, the mere delivery of negative information
takes by providing evidence for a robust connection to review does not appear to increase mistaken reviewers’ persuasive
helpfulness using data taken from a real online retailer. impact (neither through loss aversion [Kahneman and Tversky
1979] nor through alternate routes including but not limited to
a negativity bias, a blemishing effect, mistake-induced per-
General Discussion ceptions of warmth, or negativity-induced perceptions of
People are often skeptical about whether the reviews they competence [Ein-Gar, Shiv, and Tormala 2012; Sen and
encounter are authored by well-informed consumers and thus Lerman 2007]). If the mere delivery of negative information
first evaluate whether a reviewer is credible before deciding drove mistaken reviewers’ persuasive impact, then the refer-
whether to rely on his or her review (e.g., Price and Stone 2004; ence to a mistake in a different product domain could
Wen, Tan, and Chang 2009; Woodside and Davenport 1974). have increased persuasion. We did not observe this outcome.
We find that people are more likely to conclude that a reviewer These results are thus inconsistent with the possibility that
has more expertise, and are thus more likely to purchase the the mere delivery of negative information increases mistaken
product that a reviewer recommends, if the reviewer admits to reviewers’ persuasive impact.
having made a purchase mistake in that domain. The current These findings also cannot be accounted for by a pratfall
research thus suggests that featuring purchase mistakes in effect (clumsy actions that enhance the attractiveness of super-
online consumer reviews offers a promising opportunity as a ior others; Aronson, Willerman, and Floyd 1966). For one
persuasive tactic. Our research therefore provides important, thing, this alternative possibility is theoretically implausible:
practical insight into the inputs underlying consumers’ deci- pratfalls only affect assessments of superior, and thus poten-
sions about whether to purchase reviewed products while also tially threatening, others (Aronson et al. 1966), and it seems
making several theoretical contributions. First, whereas sub- unlikely that participants in the current studies perceived their
stantial research has documented the negative inferences that fellow consumers to have a superiority needed for the pratfall
observers make about mistake makers, our research uncovers effect to emerge. Moreover, Study 3 finds that the mere pres-
the conditions in which learning about others’ mistakes leads ence of a mistake is insufficient to increase a reviewer’s per-
people to perceive those others more positively (cf. products suasive impact, as would be predicted by the pratfall effect;
made by mistake; Reich, Kupor, and Smith 2017)—in partic- thus, the current results are inconsistent with this potential
ular, the conditions in which mistaken reviewers are perceived alternative explanation. Taken together, these results thus sug-
to be more expert and better able to identify the optimal course gest that acknowledging mistakes can play an important role in
of action than even reviewers whose previous experience has promoting persuasion and influencing purchase decisions.
62
Future Directions
The inferential process documented in these studies suggests
that there are likely several boundaries to the persuasive power
of mistakes. We documented one in the current research (H4):
when a reviewer makes a mistake in a different domain from
the focal purchase (Study 3), potential purchasers are no longer
more persuaded by the reviewer. Our theoretical framework
predicts several other boundaries deserving of further attention
as well. First, we have considered what happens when a prior
purchase mistake is corrected—presumably through the pro-
cess of gaining expertise—in a subsequent purchase. However,
if an initial mistake goes uncorrected (as in the case of a
reviewer who mentions making not one but two successive
mistakes), then a lack in ostensibly gained expertise should
result in a lack of reviewer persuasiveness. This might suggest,
for instance, a boundary around review valence, as a negative
product review would reasonably be more likely to include
mention of a (second) mistake than would a positive review.
Second, mistaken reviewers may indeed be seen to have gained
expertise, but they may no longer be more persuasive if people
discount the utility of that expertise. In particular, not all mis-
takes lead to learning that is relevant for other consumers. For
example, suppose a person buys a speaker system and subse-
quently realizes that the purchase was a mistake because the
color of the speakers does not match the person’s home decor.
That person may well have learned something from that expe-
rience, but the expertise gained from this mistake bears no
relevance to others whose homes are decorated with different
color schemes. If so, admitting to making this kind of subjec-
tive, idiosyncratic mistake may not increase a reviewer’s per-
suasive impact because others may recognize the irrelevance of
the mistake (and thus the irrelevance of the mistaken
reviewer’s subsequent expertise) to their own decisions. This
would suggest more broadly that our effect should hold more
strongly for more global, general reviews of products (but see
Study 1).
Our theorizing further suggests that if consumers attribute a
reviewer’s purchase mistake to stable incompetence that can-
not be fixed, they will be less likely to infer that expertise has
been gained and may thus be less influenced by the mistaken
reviewer’s product reviews. Accordingly, future research could
profit from investigating the factors that affect people’s exper-
tise attributions. For example, observers may judge that an
admitted mistake is attributable to stable incompetence if the
observers perceive that the correct product choice was patently
obvious at the time of the mistake. In such cases, observers may
infer that the cause of the mistake is most likely to be an
absence of basic common sense rather than a fixable lack of
knowledge about the product category. Extending the common
sense thread, should the content of the review contain not only
mention of a mistake but also other content indicative of a lack
of expertise (e.g., stating that a newly purchased speaker serves
as a fantastic paperweight, using poor grammar), our model
would predict that the reviewer’s advice would have less
impact. The severity of a mistaken outcome may further
Journal of Marketing 84(1)
moderate observers’ attributions. In the current studies, the
consequences of the admitted mistakes were relatively
minor—for example, in Study 1, the reviewer’s mistake
merely resulted in the purchase of suboptimal headphones.
People may perceive that mistakes that cause more severe
consequences signal stable incompetence: because people
assume that more severe outcomes emanate from larger ante-
cedents (LeBoeuf and Norton 2011), they may further assume
that larger antecedents are more foreseeable and attribute
foreseeable mistakes to incompetence. We encourage future
research to examine these possibilities.
If the incompetent occupy the low end of the expertise spec-
trum and reviewers who admit to their previous mistakes find
themselves situated much higher along that same spectrum,
what might determine where other reviewers fall on the basis
of their reviews? Our research, in complementing existing
work (Packard and Berger 2017), attests to the continued
importance of addressing this question, as inferred expertise
increases the likelihood that consumers will heed the advice
of reviews (as either featured by brands or encountered on
review repositories). For future research consideration, we
underscore one noteworthy domain in which consumers
regularly have the opportunity to learn about products: that
of purchase decisions made by friends and family. In all of our
experiments, reviewers acknowledge their own mistakes on the
basis of direct prior experience: they made the purchase, used
the product firsthand, became aware of its shortcomings, and
gained sufficient expertise to identify this purchase as a mis-
take and to rectify it in a subsequent purchase.
Incorporating the vantage point of mistaken purchases made
by others, we identify situations in which consumers might also
gain new information. First, a consumer might proceed through
all of the steps in the aforementioned sequence, save for mak-
ing the purchase in the first place. That is, the consumer might
borrow a product purchased by a friend and then proceed to use
and hold a negative evaluation of it. Would this consumer learn
anything? We propose that it depends on the preexisting opin-
ion held by (or at least acknowledged by) the consumer. If the
consumer knew all along that their friend’s purchase was a dud
and using it only verified this opinion, then summarizing this
event in a review should not signal any learning on the part of
the consumer authoring the review. Such a review might be
appraised in a manner similar to the reviewers in our studies
who made two successful purchases without any mention of a
mistake—as stable, rather than trending upward in expertise—
and would observe a degree of persuasiveness akin to theirs.
However, the consumer instead might have held high or neutral
expectations for the product borrowed from the friend, only to
have them dashed after using the product firsthand. Should this
type of consumer write a review recapping their experience, we
expect that it would convey that learning had taken place (i.e., a
knowledge-based update to the reviewing consumer’s degree
of expertise possible even in the absence of making the mis-
taken purchase per se), which our results suggest is key in
translating the admission of a mistake (be it a mistaken pur-
chase or simply a mistaken opinion) into powerful persuasion.
Reich and Maglio
Perhaps reviewers who use products purchased by others
and describe how they learned from the experience would be
highly persuasive but still not as persuasive as reviewers who
made the purchase mistake themselves. This possibility, echo-
ing the aforementioned possibility of a continuum or spectrum
of reviewer persuasiveness, might arise as the result of our
proposal that the admission of a personal purchase mistake is
more costly (and more diagnostic of confident expertise) than
the admission of a personal incorrect (favorable) opinion about
a product. To be sure, should the friend in this situation (rather
than the consumer doing the borrowing) write a review attest-
ing to their own purchase mistake, our results suggest this
review would be maximally persuasive. But what if, instead,
the friend merely described their experience to the consumer
and the consumer then authored a review summarizing the
friend’s experience—would the reviewing consumer (rather
than the friend) have an impact on potential purchasers? We
offer that the answer to this question might depend on the
degree to which those potential purchasers see the reviewing
consumer as socially close to the friend who made the mis-
take. If the relationship seems distant, then readers might
discount the potential for the reviewer to learn from the
friend’s mistake. But, if the relationship seems close, then
readers might believe that the reviewer gained just as much
expertise as the mistaken friend (Kang, Hirsh, and Chasteen
2010), bolstering the degree to which potential purchasers
place stock in the review.
Contributions to Practice
The primary takeaway of our research for practitioners advises
the featuring of mistakes to drive more online traffic and, ulti-
mately, more sales. As such, outlets at which online retailers
have control to structure the decision environment provide the
best point of entry for this recommendation. Though, to be sure,
they cannot control the content of online reviews authored by
independent consumers, online retailers do have the power to
flag certain reviews as “featured” or “highlighted,” warranting
placement ahead of an otherwise long and undifferentiated list
of reviews. By identifying one or multiple reviews that mention
a previous purchase mistake and bumping them up to the top,
online retailers can make online shoppers more likely to see,
read, and accept the advice of these reviews that our research
suggests prove especially persuasive. However, it is not only
online retailers that aspire to put helpful reviews in front of
their audience. Review curation websites benefit from persuad-
ing customers not toward any one particular course of
purchase-related action but, instead, toward feeling that the
website itself offers a valuable source of information. If cus-
tomers believe that sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Rotten
Tomatoes offer a consistent, reliable set of reviews, they return
to them more frequently ahead of various purchases, with such
increased traffic in turn increasing advertising revenues for
curation sites. Broadly speaking, then, any firm or brand in the
business of offering helpful, positive advice should feature
reviews that mention previous purchase mistakes.
63
As previously noted, companies frequently feature con-
sumer reviews to market their products. Thus, in addition to
providing novel insight into the inferences that people make
about others’ purchase mistakes, this research also has signif-
icant practical import because it suggests that marketing man-
agers may strategically omit information that actually increases
persuasive influence. In other words, featuring reviews that
include purchase mistakes might be a widely underused per-
suasive tactic: in their attempts to increase their persuasive
influence, managers may inadvertently decrease persuasive
influence through the missed opportunity of failing to feature
mistakes. The present investigation thus offers the clear direc-
tive to incorporate more (perhaps any) mention of mistakes
when featuring reviews to promote products.
We propose that this directive may be especially well-suited
to smaller firms with fewer marketing-related resources at their
disposal. What the effect documented by the present investiga-
tion lacks in magnitude and everyday prevalence, it makes up
for in subtlety and ease of implementation. As such, it may help
level the playing field between large corporations that can pour
significant resources into market research, carefully determin-
ing which reviews to feature, and smaller companies that lack
such deep market research pockets. These relatively smaller
companies may take comfort in (and win sales from) the insight
that featuring a review referencing a prior mistake acts as a
simple but beneficial tool in shaping consumer preference.
Firms are not alone in their desire to persuade, and our
findings not only might warrant consideration by the marketing
departments of large corporations but also might be brought to
bear on any attempt to convince others to take purchase-related
advice. Dovetailing with the literature on word of mouth (Babić
Rosario et al. 2016; Berger 2014; Maglio and Reich 2019;
Packard and Berger 2017), we offer two additional domains
well-suited to apply our work. First, friends often give
purchase-related advice to each other, driven either by the
relatively selfless joy of facilitating a positive purchase expe-
rience for their friend (e.g., a great gym) or by more self-
interested motives (e.g., a gym that promises a referral bonus).
We propose that both objectives should be facilitated by mak-
ing mention of a previous mistake, extending our work to closer
interpersonal relationships.
Second, a growing number of individuals have taken to
online forums to build personal brands around product reviews
and tutorials, as evidenced by the thousands of personal blogs
reviewing electronics and YouTube channels demonstrating
how to apply makeup. Insofar as these influencers hope to build
their personal brands in the form of likes, follows, and men-
tions, they need to be seen as credible experts. Our model offers
the possibility that perhaps they would be more likely to attain
their objectives should they incorporate mention of previous
mistakes into their content. Aside from the content of the
review, they might also persuade others to click on their written
and recorded reviews in the first place by including mention of
a mistake in the title itself (e.g., “Learn from my mistake!”).
Only after navigating to their review will others read and incor-
porate the reviewer’s purchase-related advice. We note,
64
though, that the decision to follow an influencer on social
media in perpetuity results from a confluence of many factors
that may or may not overlap with the momentary evaluation of
helpfulness and one-time purchase decisions around which the
present investigation centered. Still, this application of the phe-
nomenon documented and detailed herein would suggest that
inferred expertise, through admission of mistakes, can not only
drive sales but also build brand equity writ large.
Associate Editor
Donna Hoffman
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
References
Alba, Joseph W. and J. Wesley Hutchinson (1987), “Dimensions of
Consumer Expertise,” Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (4),
411–54.
Angelis, Matteo De, Andrea Bonezzi, Alessandro M. Peluso, Derek D.
Rucker, and Michele Costabile (2012), “On Braggarts and Gossips:
A Self- Enhancement Account of Word-of-mouth Generation and
Transmission,” Journal of Marketing Research, 49 (4), 551–63.
Arcillo, Maria (2011), “The Elements of a Testimonial Approach
Type of Television Advertisement That Makes It Appealing to
Consumers,” research report, University of Santo Tomas (accessed
July 18, 2017), http://docslide.net/documents/the-elements-of-a-
testimonial-approach-type-of-television-advertisement-that-
makes-it-appealing-to-consumers.html.
Argyris, Chris and Donald Schon (1978), Organizational Learning: A
Theory of Action Approach. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Aronson, Elliot, Ben Willerman, and Joanne Floyd (1966), “The
Effect of a Pratfall on Increasing Interpersonal Attractiveness,”
Psychonomic Science, 4 (6), 227–28.
Babić Rosario, Ana, Francesca Sotgiu, Kristine De Valck, and Tammo
H.A. Bijmolt (2016), “The Effect of Electronic Word of Mouth on
Sales: A Meta-Analytic Review of Platform, Product, and Metric
Factors,” Journal of Marketing Research, 53 (3), 297–318.
Baek, Hyunmi, JoongHo Ahn, and Youngseok Choi (2012),
“Helpfulness of Online Consumer Reviews: Readers’ Objectives
and Review Cues,” International Journal of Electronic Commerce,
17 (2), 99–126.
Baker, Sara M. and Richard E. Petty (1994), “Majority and Minority
Influence: Source-Position Imbalance as a Determinant of Mes-
sage Scrutiny,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
67 (1), 5–19.
Berger, Jonah (2014), “Word of Mouth and Interpersonal Communi-
cation: A Review and Directions for Future Research,” Journal of
Consumer Psychology, 24 (4), 586–607.
Journal of Marketing 84(1)
Berry, Dianne C., Laurie T. Butler, and Fiorella De Rosis (2005),
“Evaluating a Realistic Agent in an Advice-Giving Task,” Inter-
national Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 63 (3), 304–27.
Burns, Robert B. (1991), “Persuasion by Communication,” in Essen-
tial Psychology: For Students and Professionals in the Health and
Social Services. Lancaster, UK: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
236–54.
Campion, Michael A. and Robert G. Lord (1982), “A Control Systems
Conceptualization of the Goal-Setting and Changing Process,”
Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 30 (2),
265–87.
Carver, Charles S. and Michael F. Scheier (2012), Attention and
Self-Regulation: A Control-Theory Approach to Human Behavior.
Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media.
Chesney, Thomas and Daniel Su (2010), “The Impact of Anonymity
on Weblog Credibility,” International Journal of Human-
Computer Studies, 68 (10), 710–18.
Chevalier, Judith A. and Dina Mayzlin (2006), “The Effect of Word of
Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews,” Journal of Marketing
Research, 43 (3), 345–54.
Dellarocas, Chrysanthos (2003), “The Digitization of Word of Mouth:
Promise and Challenges of Online Feedback Mechanisms,” Man-
agement Science, 49 (10), 1401–24.
Dweck, Carol S. and Ellen Leggett (1988), “A Social-Cognitive
Approach to Motivation and Personality,” Psychological Review,
95 (2), 256–73.
East, Robert, Kathy Hammond, and Malcolm Wright (2007), “The
Relative Incidence of Positive and Negative Word of Mouth: A
Multi-Category Study,” International Journal of Research in
Marketing, 24 (2), 175–84.
Ein-Gar, Danit, Baba Shiv, and Zakary Tormala (2012), “When
Blemishing Leads to Blossoming: The Positive Effect of Nega-
tive Information,” Journal of Consumer Research, 38 (5),
846–59.
Gawande, Atule (1999), “Annals of Medicine: When Doctors Make
Mistakes,” The New Yorker (February 1), https://www.newyorker.
com/magazine/1999/02/01/when-doctors-make-mistakes.
Grewal, Dhruv, Sukumar Kavanoor, Edward F. Fern, Carolyn Costley,
and James Barnes (1997), “Comparative Versus Noncomparative
Advertising: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Marketing, 61 (4),
1–15.
Harper, Elizabeth (2014), “Here Are the Best Ways You Can Lever-
age Positive Online Reviews,” Sprout Social (March 10), https://
sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-leverage-positive-reviews-into-
social-success/.
Ho-Dac, Nga N., Stephen J. Carson, and William L. Moore (2013),
“The Effects of Positive and Negative Online Customer Reviews:
Do Brand Strength and Category Maturity Matter?” Journal of
Marketing, 77 (6), 37–53.
Hong, Ying-yi, Chi-yue Chiu, and Carol S. Dweck (1995), “Implicit
Theories of Intelligence,” in Efficacy, Agency, and Self-Esteem,
Michael H. Kernis, ed. New York: Springer, 197–216.
Huei-Chen, Hsu (2007), “A Study of Factors Affecting the Success of
Private Label Brands in Chinese e-Market,” Journal of Technology
Management in China, 2 (1), 38–53.
Reich and Maglio
Kahneman, Daniel and Amos Tversky (1979), “Prospect Theory: An
Analysis of Decision Under Risk,” Econometrica, 47 (2), 263–91.
Kang, Sonia K., Jacob B. Hirsh, and Alison L. Chasteen (2010), “Your
Mistakes Are Mine: Self-Other Overlap Predicts Neural Response
to Observed Errors,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
46 (1), 229–32.
Kats, Rimma (2018), “When Buying Expensive Items, Consumers
Turn to Reviews,” eMarketer (January 26), https://www.emark
eter.com/content/when-buying-expensive-items-consumers-turn-
to-reviews.
Kruger, Justin, Derrick Wirtz, Leaf Van Boven, and T. William
Altermatt (2004), “The Effort Heuristic,” Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 40 (1), 91–98.
Kunda, Ziva (1999), Social Cognition: Making Sense of People. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kupor, Daniella, Taly Reich, and Kristin Laurin (2018), “The
(Bounded) Benefits of Correction: The Unanticipated Interperso-
nal Advantages of Making and Correcting Mistakes,” Organiza-
tional Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 149 (11),
165–78.
Laband, David N. (1986), “Advertising as Information: An Empirical
Note,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 68 (3), 517–21.
LeBoeuf, Robin and Norton, Michael I. (2011), “Consequence-Cause
Matching: Looking to the Consequences of Events to Infer their
Causes,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (1), 128–41.
Lipsman, Andrew, Rebecca Chadwick, Cindy Liu, Karin von Abrams,
and Yoram Wurmser (2019), “US 2018 Holiday Season Review
and 2019 Preview,” eMarketer (February), https://www.emarketer.
com/content/us-2018-holiday-season-review-and-2019-preview.
Locke, Edwin A., Karyll N. Shaw, Lise M. Saari, and Gary P. Latham
(1981), “Goal Setting and Task Performance: 1969–1980,”
Psychological Bulletin, 90 (1), 125–52.
Magee, Robert G. and Sriram Kalyanaraman (2010), “The Perceived
Moral Qualities of Web Sites: Implications for Persuasion Pro-
cesses in Human–Computer Interaction,” Ethics and Information
Technology, 12 (2), 109–25.
Maglio, Sam J. and Taly Reich (2019), “Feeling Certain: Gut Choice,
the True Self, and Attitude Certainty,” Emotion, 19 (5), 876–88.
Mudambi, Susan M. and David Schuff (2010), “What Makes a Helpful
Review? A Study of Customer Reviews on Amazon.com,” MIS
Quarterly, 34 (1), 185–200.
Murphy, Patrick E. and Ben M. Enis (1986), “Classifying Products
Strategically,” Journal of Marketing, 50 (3), 24–42.
Murphy, Rosie (2017), “Local Consumer Review Survey 2017,”
BrightLocal (accessed October 6, 2019), https://www.brightlocal.
com/learn/local-consumer-review-survey-2017/.
Packard, Grant and Jonah Berger (2017), “How Language Shapes
Word of Mouth’s Impact,” Journal of Marketing Research, 54
(4), 572–88.
Parker, Dianne and Rebecca Lawton (2003), “Psychological Contri-
bution to the Understanding of Adverse Events in Health Care,”
Quality and Safety in Health Care, 12 (6), 453–57.
65
Peterson, Christopher, Amy Semmel, Carl Von Baeyer, Lyn Y.
Abramson, Gerald I. Metalsky, and Martin E.P. Seligman (1982),
“The Attributional Style Questionnaire,” Cognitive Theory and
Research, 6 (3), 287–99.
Podsakoff, Philip M. and Jiing-Lih Farh (1989), “Effects of Feedback
Sign and Credibility on Goal Setting and Task Performance,”
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 44 (1),
45–67.
Price, Paul C. and Eric R. Stone (2004), “Intuitive Evaluation of Like-
lihood Judgment Producers: Evidence for a Confidence Heuristic,”
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 17 (1), 39–57.
Rawlins, Anthony (2011), “Why Including Consumer Reviews on
Travel Sites Matters,” Phocus Wire (June 28), https://www.phocus
wire.com/Why-including-consumer-reviews-on-travel-sites-
matters.
Reich, Taly, Daniella M. Kupor, and Rosanna K. Smith (2017), “Made
by Mistake: When Mistakes Increase Product Preference,” Journal
of Consumer Research, 44 (5), 1085–1103.
Sen, Shahana and Dawn Lerman (2007), “Why Are You Telling Me
This? An Examination into Negative Consumer Reviews on the
Web,” Journal of Interactive Marketing, 21 (4), 76–94.
Spencer, Steven J., Mark P. Zanna, and Geoffrey T. Fong (2005),
“Establishing a Causal Chain: Why Experiments Are Often More
Effective Than Mediational Analyses in Examining Psychological
Processes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89 (6),
845–51.
Sun, Baohong, Scott A. Neslin, and Kannan Srinivasan (2003),
“Measuring the Impact of Promotions on Brand Switching When
Consumers Are Forward Looking,” Journal of Marketing
Research, 40 (4), 389–405.
Van Trijp, Hans C.M., Wayne D. Hoyer, and J. Jeffrey Inman (1996),
“Why Switch? Product Category: Level Explanations for True
Variety-Seeking Behavior,” Journal of Marketing Research, 33
(3), 281–92.
Walter, Clyde K. and John R. Grabner (1975), “Stockout Cost Models:
Empirical Tests in a Retail Situation,” Journal of Marketing, 39
(3), 56–60.
Wen, Chen, Bernard C.Y. Tan, and Klarissa Ting-Ting Chang (2009),
“Advertising Effectiveness on Social Network Sites: An Investi-
gation of Tie Strength, Endorser Expertise and Product Type on
Consumer Purchase Intention,” in Proceedings of the International
Conference on Information Systems. Atlanta: Association for
Information Systems, 151–71.
Wojnicki, Andrea C. and David Godes (2017), “Signaling Success:
Word of Mouth as Self-Enhancement,” Customer Needs and Solu-
tions, 4 (4), 68–82.
Woodside, Arch G. and J. William Davenport (1974), “The Effect of
Salesman Similarity and Expertise on Consumer Purchasing
Behavior,” Journal of Marketing Research, 11 (2), 198–202.
Yeomans, Michael (2019), “Some Hedonic Consequences of
Perspective-Taking in Recommending,” Journal of Consumer Psy-
chology, 29 (1), 22–38.