Unexplored Hypotheses on Potency-Magnitude Relations of eWOM Messages with Intensified Comparative Expressions

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is an important information source that influences consumer product evaluations. The author previously developed a computational model that predicts the potency-magnitude relations of eWOM messages involving subjective rank expressions, which refer to linguistic representations related to the attitude-levels of the benefits of product attributes. This paper extends the typology of message expressions and mathematically investigates potency-magnitude relations with a focus on intensified comparative expressions that involve the “degree” of the differences among two or more objects. The investigations were performed first under the premise of a strict assumption called an interval assumption, and the results were verified under the premise of a conservative assumption called a surjection assumption. These assumptions were introduced to determine the cognitive relationship between attitude-levels and their difference-levels. The investigations include the development of a Q-magnitude Relation Map (Q-Map) that illustrates how the relations change based on the values of two evaluation parameters: evaluation target size and evaluation scale size. Based on the observations of the Q-Maps, five unexplored hypotheses on the potency-magnitude relations were developed with respect to intensified comparative expressions. Unexplored Hypotheses on Potency-Magnitude Relations of eWOM Messages with Intensified Comparative Expressions