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1. Introduction
With the rapid development of digital technologies and the internet, the boundaries between countries are shrinking and markets are becoming global (Oh et al., 2016). Simultaneously, cross-border online shopping is another trend that has spread worldwide, and global e-commerce has now become a reality (Johnson et al., 2003; Moore, 2015). Numerous consumers attempt to obtain enough product information to minimize their risks before purchasing. Generally, consumers have viewed electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) as more credible and trustworthy than corporate-led marketing communication (Christodoulides et al., 2012; de Matos and Rossi, 2008). This means that the role of eWOM is becoming increasingly prevalent and important (Berger and Milkman, 2012; Dellarocas, 2003), and it has a strong influence on consumers and firms (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006; Dellarocas et al., 2007). Effectively, eWOM is said to be more influential than its offline counterpart (WOM), given its ability to reach a larger number of individuals instantly and on a global scale (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004; Phelps et al., 2004). Due to the increased visibility of online product reviews from previous buyers, the influence of the majority may become more important during online shopping (Christodoulides et al., 2012). Therefore, numerous studies have been conducted to analyze the role of significance of eWOM (Berger and Milkman, 2012; Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006; Dellarocas, 2003; Dellarocas et al., 2007; Park and Kim, 2008). For instance, Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006) showed that online book reviews have a significant impact on book sales, and Liu (2006) explained his finding by suggesting that consumer reviews on the Yahoo Movies website greatly influence box office revenue.
Given the size of the internet and the amount of information available, consumers often articulate a holistic evaluation of products and services from a combination of both positive and negative reviews (Coker, 2012). Associated with this, a few studies have been examining the valence effects of mixed eWOM (Coker, 2012; Floh et al., 2009; Tang et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2015). For example, Tang et al. (2014) highlighted the performance implications of neutral user-generated content (UGC) on product sales by differentiating mixed-neutral UGC, which contains an equal amount of positive and negative claims generated, from indifferent-neutral UGC, which...