The Differential Effect of Negative Online Review Semantic Property Type (Factualness vs. Evaluativeness) on Purchase Intention: The Moderating Role of Sellers’ Response Content Type (Informativeness vs. Empathy) and Construal Level (High-level Construal vs. Low-level Construal)*

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how purchase intention varies according to negative online review in terms of semantic property types such as factualness and evaluativeness. And it also investigates the moderating effect of sellers' response content type and construal level between the impact of negative online review and purchase intention. Negative online review's semantic property type such as factualness and evaluativeness is set as an independent variable. Sellers's response content type such as informativeness and empathy and costrual level of sellers response such as high-level construal and low-level construal are set as moderating variables. It is hypothesized that evaluativeness of negative online review would improve the purchase intention more than factualness of negative online review. It investigates the moderating role of sellers' response content type between negative online review's semantic property type and purchase intention. It also examines the moderating effect of sellers' response construal level between negative online review's semantic property type and purchase intention. Research design, data, and methodology: Using experiment as a research method, university students as subjects are exposed to one of semantic property level of negative online review (factualness vs. evaluativeness) and content type and construal level of seller's response. Data are collected through a questionnaire, which is verified by t-test. Content type and construal level of sellers' response as moderating variable concerned with negative online review characteristics were drawn from the literature reviews. 8 experiments are executed with 2 different types of negative online review in terms of semantic property type (factualness vs. evaluativeness), content type of seller's response (informativeness vs. empathy) and construal level of seller's response (high-level construal vs. low-level constural) randomly exposes to each subject group one at a time. The response data are verified by two-way ANOVA. Results and Conclusions: The results of current study can be summarized as follows. First, semantic property type of negative online review shows a differential influence on purchase intention. Specifically, evaluativeness of negative online review has more positive effect on purchase intention than factualness of negative online review. Second, it shows that content type of sellers' response as a moderating variable (factualness vs. evaluativeness) has an interaction effect on semantic property type of negative online review affecting purchase intention. When content type of sellers' response is informativeness, factualness of negative online review shows higher purchase intention than evaluativeness of negative online review, whereas if content type of sellers' response is empathy, evaluativeness has higher on purchase intention than factualness of negative online review. Third, it reveals that construal level of sellers' response (high-level construal vs. low-level construal level) has a moderating effect on semantic property type of negative online review affecting purchase intention. When sellers' response is high-level construal, factualness of negative online review has higher purchase intention than evalutivenesss of negative online review, whereas if sellers' response is low-level construal, evaluativeness of negative online review shows higher purchase intention than factualnesss of negative online review. Finally, on the basis of the study results, theoretical and managerial implications were discussed and the limitations of the study and future research directions were suggested.