Who is behind the message? The power of expert reviews on eWOM platforms

•The majority’s opinion influences decisions more than single conflicting reviews.•Experts can overpower majority even if most other reviews display conflicting views.•General attitude towards reviews moderates influence of experts.•Expert reviewers valuable to identify useful information. Consumers are increasingly relying on electronic word-of-mouth, such as online reviews, before making purchase decisions. To reduce uncertainty about the validity of a review, consumers draw on different attributes of online review platforms, including the overall aggregated rating and perceived expertise of the review writer. This research aims to verify whether the aggregated rating or a single expert review is more convincing. To investigate the power of expert reviews, two scenario-based experiments were conducted in order to compare the aggregated rating with a single conflicting review. The results indicate that a single expert review can nullify the influence of the aggregated rating on purchase intention, and that the influence of the conflicting expert review differs depending on the reader’s attitude towards online reviews. The findings indicate that expert reviewers play an important role on eWOM platforms and can be helpful for service providers and customers alike.