Engaging customers with online restaurant community through mutual disclosure amid the COVID-19 pandemic: The roles of customer trust and swift guanxi

Abstract

Online restaurant communities have emerged as an important channel for restaurants to engage customers and increase sales amid the COVID-19 pandemic in China. According to social penetration theory and social exchange theory, this study investigates how mutual disclosures between servers and customers influence customers' social influence and knowledge-sharing engagement through customer trust and swift guanxi. Using questionnaire data collected from 340 customers, this study finds that server disclosure facilitates customer disclosure, and both server and customer disclosures positively predict customer trust and swift guanxi. Furthermore, customer trust can in turn promote swift guanxi and customers’ social influence engagement, while swift guanxi promotes both kinds of customer engagement. The outstanding theoretical implications of the present research lie in that it depicts the formation mechanism of customer engagement from the new lens of mutual disclosure and guanxi in Chinese culture. Practical implications can help restaurants improve performance.