The power of personalization: Hosts how to promote guest bookings by personalized responses

Abstract

Scholars have started focusing on how host responses impact guest bookings. However, studies on the effect of hosts' personalized response strategies, reviewer-matching and content-matching, are still insufficient. Guide by the elaboration likelihood model, we regard reviewer-matching as a peripheral cue and content-matching as a central cue. Then, construct a theoretical framework to analyze their impact on subsequent guest bookings. The results show that (1) Content-matching is more effective in promoting guest bookings than reviewer-matching. (2) These positive impacts will weaken when the booking price increases. (3) When the host chooses entire rental listings, reviewer-matching will not be conducive to guest bookings. This study can provide valuable insight into future research on the underlying mechanism of exploring the effects of personalized responses. Meanwhile, hosts can better use reviewer-matching and content-matching response strategies based on our results.