While several product classification paradigms are potentially
relevant for understanding review helpfulness, the search/experience
paradigm has proven particularly useful for explaining online shopping
behavior and for understanding consumer evaluations of
online product reviews. Nelson distinguishes
between search and experience goods based on the extent to which
shoppers can experience the goods prior to purchase. Others argue
that because this search/experience distinction can vary across retail
channels for a given product, a classification paradigm that is less
channel-dependent is beneficial [59,83]. Consistent with this latter perspective, we conceptualize the search/experience distinction as
the extent to which shoppers feel the need to directly experience
goods to evaluate their quality. The greater (less) the perceived need
to directly experience a product, the more experience (search) qualities
the product possesses.We view goods as a bundle of attributes, and we
consider classification at the good, rather than attribute, leve