Effect of linguistic disfluency on consumer satisfaction: Evidence from an online knowledge payment platform

The popularity of online knowledge payment platforms enables online users to disseminate paid knowledge via voice communication. However, such communication provided by users with little professional teaching skills commonly tends to contain linguistic disfluency, which is a potential determinant of consumer satisfaction of paid knowledge products. This study examines how linguistic disfluency inherent in paid knowledge products impacts consumer satisfaction and the moderating effects of two consumer knowledge aspects, namely expertise and familiarity. Based on processing fluency theory, we build a theoretical model to illuminate relationships between consumer satisfaction, linguistic disfluency, and consumer knowledge. Leveraging data from Zhihu Live, a leading online knowledge payment platform, we find that linguistic disfluency is negatively associated with consumer satisfaction; nevertheless, this negative association disappears or turns into a positive effect for con-sumers with high expertise and low familiarity. Our study offers implications for platforms to accomplish high consumer satisfaction and further improve user retention and revenue.