Media Richness in Online Consumer Interactions: An Exploratory Study of Consumer-Opinion Web Sites

Consumer-opinion Web sites provide people with unparalleled opportunities to articulate their opinions on products and services, read those of others, or interact with other consumers. The success of such Web sites is limited by three challenges: the quality of contributions, users’ motivation to participate, and readers’ trust in the writer’s competence. Drawing on the concept of media richness, this article investigates how such Web sites could provide richer and more useful exchanges to both consumers and companies. The results suggest that consumer-opinion Web sites can provide richer exchanges when they separate the tasks of information exchange and social interaction and support them with appropriate levels of richness.