  Online reviews have become essential for users to make informed decisions in
everyday tasks ranging from planning summer vacations to purchasing groceries
and making financial investments. A key problem in using online reviews is the
overabundance of online that overwhelms the users. As a result, recommendation
systems for providing helpfulness of reviews are being developed. This paper
argues that cultural background is an important feature that impacts the nature
of a review written by the user, and must be considered as a feature in
assessing the helpfulness of online reviews. The paper provides an in-depth
study of differences in online reviews written by users from different cultural
backgrounds and how incorporating culture as a feature can lead to better
review helpfulness recommendations. In particular, we analyze online reviews
originating from two distinct cultural spheres, namely Arabic and Western
cultures, for two different products, hotels and books. Our analysis
demonstrates that the nature of reviews written by users differs based on their
cultural backgrounds and that this difference varies based on the specific
product being reviewed. Finally, we have developed six different review
helpfulness recommendation models that demonstrate that taking culture into
account leads to better recommendations.
