Do consumer critics write differently from professional critics? A genre analysis of online film reviews Ilona K.E. de Jong a , Christian Burgers b,n a Theater Company Suburbia, Almere, The Netherlands b VU University Amsterdam, Department of Communication Science, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 23 August 2012 Received in revised form 25 February 2013 Accepted 25 March 2013 Available online 2 April 2013 Keywords: Genre analysis Consumer criticism Online reviews Professional criticism Word of mouth abstract Consumers often base their choices to purchase experience goods like movies on online reviews. These reviews can be written by professional critics or by other consumers. However, little is known on the issue how the texts written by these two groups of reviewers differ. To answer this question, we conducted a genre analysis of online film reviews by analyzing and comparing the moves and strategies in online film reviews written by professional and consumer critics. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses show that these two groups of texts differ: Consumer critics mainly evaluate the movies and mostly write from a personal perspective. In contrast, reviews written by professional critics describe the movie instead of evaluating it. These results show that online reviews written by professional and consumer critics differ in terms of content which may have important implications for discourse on the Internet. & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Many consumer choices are based on uncertainty, because the quality of products like films, restaurants and hotels is revealed only after the consumer has consumed and experienced the products (Shapiro and Varian, 1999). Thus, to reduce uncertainty, consumers often base their choices for these products on informa- tion available prior to purchase (Gemser et al., 2007). The Internet has made it easier for consumers to collect such information and consumers can base their product choices on such aspects like the product's price and availability or the way in which the product can be ordered. Yet, the most important determinant of online consumer behavior is the presence and content of online reviews in which other consumers discuss their product experiences (Fagerstrøm, 2011). Given the high impact of these reviews, one of the most crucial challenges for businesses and discourse analysts is understanding their dynamics. Marketing scholars have demonstrated that various aspects of reviews can determine their effectiveness, one of which is the expertise of the reviewer (e.g., Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009; Willemsen et al., 2010; Willemsen et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2010). Some studies show that expert reviewers may have more impact on consumers than non-expert reviewers because the former are perceived as being more knowledgeable about the topic than the latter (Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009; Willemsen et al., 2010). Other studies show that experts may be less persuasive (Willemsen et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2010), because consumers expect experts to be less trustworthy than consumer reviewers (Willemsen et al., 2010). Furthermore, language aspects of the reviews may also influ- ence the way they are perceived (e.g., Schellekens et al., 2010; Schindler and Bickart, 2012) as reviews with descriptive rather than evaluative information (Schindler and Bickart, 2012) and abstract rather than concrete language (Schellekens et al., 2010) are seen as more helpful or persuasive. Yet, even though the type of reviewer (expert, consumer) and the language of the review are important predictors of the effectiveness of online reviews, little is known about the question of whether or how the language used in the review depends on the expertise of its author; language and expertise have—until now—been studied independently of each other. Furthermore, the establishment of expertise has been studied as an explicit cue given by the reviewer (Willemsen et al., 2011), which means that professionals explicitly indicate their expertise on a certain topic (e.g., an expert reviewer of digital cameras may say something like “As somebody who has been a professional photographer for over twenty years”). It may be that expertise may also be acknowledged implicitly, so that profes- sional (expert) reviewers write differently from consumer (non- expert) reviewers. In order to analyze how professional and consumer reviewers structure their reviews, we aim to answer the question if and how professional reviewers write differently from consumer reviewers. Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dcm Discourse, Context and Media 2211-6958/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.03.001 n Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 20 5987889. E-mail addresses: i.k.e.de.jong@kpnmail.nl (I.K.E. de Jong), c.f.burgers@vu.nl (C. Burgers). Discourse, Context and Media 2 (2013) 75–83