Do product reviews provide fair evaluations? Unravelling discursive strategies in highly recommended reviews on M-commerce automobile apps

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

Abstract

Product reviews are widely regarded as balanced evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of goods, intended to inform potential consumers. However, this form of user-generated content is not foolproof, as unethical businesses may endorse certain reviews as highly recommended reviews (HRRs). This issue of covert review manipulation is particularly noticeable in the marketing of higher-priced products, such as automobiles, where the user-contributed reviews, valued for their perceived informativeness and trustworthiness, are frequently appropriated by sellers to advance business interests. Despite the growing prevalence of these curated reviews and their role in subtle persuasion, covert promotional practices remain underexplored from a linguistic perspective. To address this gap, the present study adopts a genre analysis lens to examine the move structures and discursive strategies of HRRs of major Chinese M-commerce automobile apps. The analysis identified a consistent nine-move structure characterized by predominantly positive sentiment, comprising five obligatory and four optional moves, which are distinct from review structures and sentiment patterns documented in prior literature. These moves strategically exploit discursive strategies to fulfill both explicit informative functions and implicit promotional intentions. This study contributes to a critical understanding of covert manipulation in digital review genres. It also offers practical implications for raising consumer awareness of hidden persuasive tactics across e-commerce and m-commerce platforms.

Keywords

Aautomobile marketing, Review manipulation, Positivity bias, Move analysis, Covert discursive strategies

Publication Title

SAGE Open

ISSN

2158-2440

DOI

10.1177/21582440251408716

Divisions

Faculty of Languages and Linguistics

Volume

16

Issue

1

First Page

21582440251408716

Publisher

SAGE Publications

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