Graduation Semester and Year
Summer 2026
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration
Department
Marketing
First Advisor
Yiyi Li
Second Advisor
Traci Freling
Third Advisor
Jiaxiu He
Abstract
Consumers often make marketplace decisions without direct experience and therefore rely on signals embedded in words and images. This article-based dissertation examines how experiential language in online reviews and expressive design in movie posters shape consumer judgment. The first essay investigates explicit usage-frequency signals. Across field data from Steam and Yelp and a controlled experiment, repeated-use statements increase perceived review helpfulness, whereas first-time-use statements decrease it. These effects vary with subjectivity, valence, and emotional arousal, showing that experience cues are interpreted together with message content and tone. The second essay examines how poster valence, arousal, aesthetic appeal, and novelty influence consumer’s purchase intention and the movie’s box office performance using 3,596 movies released between 2000 and 2021 and four controlled experiments. We show that aesthetic appeal and positive valence are generally associated with stronger consumer response, while arousal and novelty depend on genre and contextual fit. Together, the essays show that marketplace signals do not have uniformly positive or negative effects. Their influence depends on the inference consumers draw, the modality through which the signal is communicated, and its fit with surrounding information and expectations. The dissertation contributes an integrative account of how words and images guide consumer ii interpretation under uncertainty and offers implications for reviewers, platforms, marketers, and creative decision makers.
Keywords
Signaling theory, Online reviews, Review helpfulness, Usage frequency, Movie poster design, Box office performance
Disciplines
Marketing
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
He, Jingjing, "SIGNALS IN WORDS AND IMAGES: ESSAYS ON ONLINE REVIEWS AND MOVIE POSTER DESIGN" (2026). Marketing Dissertations. 2.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/marketing_dissertations2/2
Comments
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Yiyi Li, for her guidance, support, and encouragement throughout my doctoral studies and dissertation research. I also thank my committee members, Dr. Traci Freling and Dr. Jiaxiu He, for their valuable feedback, thoughtful suggestions, and support throughout the dissertation process.