Write Online Reviews Research Articles

Exploring the complexity of the individualistic culture through social exchange in online reviews

Online reviews have reshaped visitor economies. However, there is a lack of research regarding the motivations of visitors to write online reviews as most existing research disregards the cultural differences between individuals. This research investigates the motivations of museum visitors from individualistic cultures to write online reviews with the critique of Hofstede (1980) through the lens of Social Exchange Theory (SET). This study utilises the netnography methodology. One hundred and eleven detailed TripAdvisor reviews and ten email interviews were collected. Theoretically, we contribute to SET by developing a two-dimensional framework which indicates 1) that the complexity and heterogeneity of individualist culture were identified in the dimension of social exchange between the service provider and the visitors through online reviews; and 2) American and British visitors share similar individualist culture in the second dimension of social exchange between peers in online reviews. Practically, this research can benefit the online reputation management and expectation management for visitor attractions, with the goal of improving their visitor offerings and to minimise negative reviews.

Brand equity, online reviews, and message trust: the moderating role of persuasion knowledge

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate whether a message from a brand with stronger brand equity generates more trust than a message from a brand with lower brand equity, and thus is more likely to encourage consumers to write online reviews. This paper also explores what happens when consumers become aware that brands are trying to persuade them to write a review.Design/methodology/approachThrough three experimental studies, where participants were randomly assigned to a brand that has either a stronger or weaker brand equity, participants’ intention to write reviews was measured. Trust in the message was measured to study its mediating role, and persuasion knowledge of the participants was manipulated to investigate its moderating effect.FindingsThe findings confirm that consumers are more likely to write online reviews when a message comes from a brand that has stronger brand equity, trust in the message mediates the relationship between brand equity and consumer intention to write an online review, and persuasion knowledge has a differential effect on consumer intention to write reviews.Originality/valueThe study adds to the brand equity and online review literature by providing evidence that a higher level of consumer trust on brands that have stronger brand equity leads to an increased intention to write a review for the brand. It also shows that consumers’ awareness of the motive of the brand is more beneficial for brands with strong brand equity, contributing to persuasion knowledge literature.

To follow others or be yourself? Social influence in online restaurant reviews

Purpose Online reviews are often likely to be socially influenced by prior reviews. This study aims to examine key review and reviewer characteristics which may influence the social influence process. Design/methodology/approach Restaurant review data from Yelp.com are analyzed using an ordered logit model and text mining approach. Findings This study reveals that prior average review rating exerts a positive influence on subsequent review ratings for the same restaurant, but the effect is attenuated by the variance in existing review ratings. Moreover, social influence is stronger for consumers who had a moderate dining experience or invested less cognitive effort in writing online reviews. Compared to reviewers classified by Yelp as “elite,” non-elite reviewers appear more susceptible to the social influence of prior average review rating. Practical implications This study provides guidelines for mitigating the social influence of prior reviews and improving the accuracy of online product/service ratings, which will eventually enhance business and the reputation of online review platforms. Originality/value The findings from this study contribute to the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) literature and social influence literature in terms of the bidirectional nature of social influence on eWOM.

Online tourist reviews and accidental conveyors of memories of the atomic bomb

ABSTRACT In this digital age, online reviews of tourist destinations travel fast and far, and word of mouth information can affect the reputation of the sites and their perceived sociocultural significance. For heritage sites of war and human suffering where their raison-d’être lies in their mission to pass on the memory, the stakes are high. What makes up the content of tourist reviews and do they change over time? What motivates tourists to write online reviews? Are the intended messages transmitted from the stakeholders of the memorial site to the tourists, and under what condition and in what context? These questions are explored in this empirical study that focuses on the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in the Peace Park and its Peace Memorial Museum. Using interdisciplinary analytics, we scrutinised the text and context of online reviews of this heritage site over ten consecutive years. The results disclosed that peace messages associated with the heritage site are indeed transmitted to the tourists under a set of specific conditions, where they spontaneously pass on the message online as if they are owners of the legacy themselves, and the motivation for this tourist behaviour is discussed.

Unfolding the drivers for sentiments generated by Airbnb Experiences

Purpose Airbnb Experiences is a new type of service launched by Airbnb in November 2016, where users can offer travellers a wide range of activities. This study devotes attention to analysing customer feedback expressed in online reviews published in Airbnb to evaluate those experiences. Design/methodology/approach A total of 1,110 reviews were collected from 12 categories, including 111 experiences, resulting in 10 reviews per experience. First, the sentiment score was computed based on the text of the reviews. Second, 17 quantitative features encompassing user, Airbnb experience and review information were used to model the score through a support vector machine. Third, a sensitivity analysis was performed to extract knowledge on the most relevant features influencing the sentiment score. Findings Tourists writing online reviews are not only influenced by their tourist experience but also by their own online experience with the booking and online review platform. The number of reviews made by the user accounted for more than 20 per cent of relevance, while users with more reviews tended to grant more positive reviews. Originality/value Current literature is enhanced with a conceptual model grounded on existing studies that assess tourist satisfaction with tour services. Both services online visibility and user characteristics have shown significant importance to tourist satisfaction, adding to the existing body of knowledge.

Leisure travel behavior of generation Y & Z at the destination and post-purchase

Researching travel trends of new generations is the first step for tourism providers towards modifying their offers in order to match target markets’ needs. The above represents this paper’s primary purpose. The motivation and behavior of the new generations, also known as Millennials or Generation Y and Post-Millennials or Generation Z, influence the contemporary tourism characteristics. They are both more than familiar with recent technology trends and usage. There are two main goals of this paper. The first is to determine the behavior of Generation Y and Z members during their stay in the tourist destination and their preferences in terms of company, accommodation and transport options. The second goal of this paper focuses on exploring the behavior of the Y and Z generation members related the dissemination of information about their stay in a tourist destination. Questions covered issues regarding review writing about a tourist destination or accommodation, the timing of writing - during or after returning from a tourist destination, the announcement of their travel intentions on social networks etc. A significant number of respondents post on social media and write online reviews regarding their travel experiences. The originality of the papers steams from the insufficient studies of the topic. The research methodology applied an online survey as the main research instrument. The main limitations are related to the minor geographical area researched.
 Keywords: online tourism behavior, generation Y, generation Z, buying behavior in tourism, visit phase, post purchase behavior in tourism.

Do consumers care about CSR in their online reviews? An empirical analysis

This research investigates how consumers assess hotels’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices when writing online reviews. The study explores the CSR discourse in online reviews over a 10-year period, highlighting how CSR’s social and environmental dimensions relate to the main hospitality topics (experience, amenities, location, transactions, value). Based on a longitudinal automated text analysis covering 480,000 reviews across six European cities, the findings reveal that hotel customers have gradually begun paying more attention to CSR factors, particularly to social and environmental ones. However, the aggregate results suggest that the overall CSR consumer discourse is still very limited, although it does have important implications in terms of consumer emotions and hospitality dimensions.

Motives for writing online reviews in post-vacation phase

PurposeThis quantitative study aims to examine background motives that navigate individuals to share their opinions, in the context of an individual’s post-vacation phase and its relation to the destination of Serbia, from the standpoint of age, gender and nationality.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected throughout six weeks via a self-administered Web survey. The survey was adopted and based on the scale developed by Bronner and de Hoog (2011).FindingsResults indicate that the dominant driver to submit an online review after a trip is to help vacationers (altruism) and that men and women display differences in this, but not in other motives. Both age and nationality do not influence the particular motive to leave an online review.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of this study is the total number of answers. However, sampling was rather purposive, which gives us a good indicator of the population behavior.Practical implicationsUnderstanding these drivers is essential in formulating strategies for managing the interaction with opinion leaders. On a larger scale, the results can contribute the market segmentation and customer communication approaches in Serbian tourism marketing.Originality/valueMotives that trigger individuals to compose an online review have not been investigated and thematic studies are still missing, in the case of Serbia in particular.

Consumers’ responses to invitations to write online reviews

PurposeThe main purpose of the current research is to investigate the effectiveness of messages sent out by firms inviting customers to write online reviews. The joint effect of message framing, power and individuals’ need for status (NFS) on consumers’ intentions to write a review was examined.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a 2 (message framing: self-vs other-focused) × 2 (power state: high vs low) × 2 (NFS: high vs low) factorial design with message framing being manipulated and power and NFS being measured.FindingsThe results show that customers low in power are more likely to be persuaded by a message focused on others (vs self), and customers high in power show similar levels of behavioral intention regardless of message framing. Furthermore, this effect is significant only among those with a high (vs low) NFS.Practical implicationsHospitality practitioners may consider customizing the invitation message based on target consumers’ individual traits. They may either prime consumers’ status seeking intentions and/or sense of power, or gain such insights through outside marketing research companies. Depending on the characteristics of the recipients, companies can choose either a self-focused or an other-focused message to increase its persuasiveness.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies examining the joint effect of message framing, power and NFS on consumers’ willingness to write online reviews.

Examining an asymmetric effect between online customer reviews emphasis and overall satisfaction determinants

Do customer online reviews truly reflect the determinants of customer overall satisfaction with hotels? Using a text mining approach: latent semantic analysis and a text regression approach, this study compared the product and service attributes contributing to customer perception on editor-recommended and -nonrecommended hotels at various star levels. This study found that positive and negative attributes contributing to customer perception differ; even for the same attribute, its importance level for customer perception differs between different types of hotels. This study found an asymmetric effect of the focus of online reviews and determinants of customer satisfaction: not all positive/negative textual factors mined from online customer reviews significantly influence their overall satisfaction, and the emphasis level of a certain attribute in customer reviews differs from the relative importance level of the influence of the attribute on customer overall satisfaction. This shows the different psychological mechanisms of customers writing online reviews and their overall satisfaction generation.

How E-WOM motivations vary by hotel review website

PurposeBased on equity theory, this paper investigates if guests write on different review websites because of different internal motivations. Furthermore, it examines the moderating effect of service’ exceeds, neutral, negative, and service recovery–on the relationship between motivations and type of website to write reviews.Design/methodology/approachTo exam if the star ratings of the same hotels were significantly different across hotel, online travel agency, and third-party review websites, this study collected 12,000 star ratings from 40 hotels across the US and conducted t-tests. A survey of 1,600 US travelers was administered to uncover the motivations for writing on different websites/website combinations. Four different scenarios were used to test the moderating effect of service: exceeds, neutral, negative, and service-recovery. These responses were analyzed using backwards stepwise regression.FindingsStar ratings for the same hotel do differ among the three websites; hotel is the highest and third-party is the lowest. There are seven distinct groups of guests. Guests are motivated to write reviews to balance inequitable relationships. They decide which website/website combination best improves the equity relationship. This research indicates that guests’ choice of website is based on different internal motivations. The moderating effect of the service experience was significant.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature by examining different motivations to write online reviews by website. Prior research typically examined one website or aggregated results from multiple websites, ignoring website specific differences. This can help hoteliers to understand why initiatives to promote reviews on certain websites may be unsuccessful.

Conspicuous Reviewing: Affiliation with High-status Organizations as a Motivation for Writing Online Reviews

The vast amount of reviews available online presents a paradox: Why do reviewers spend hours writing them? Here we demonstrate in three studies that one reason people write online reviews is to bolster their public identity by conspicuously affiliating with high-status products or organizations. First, we conducted a set of surveys and found that participants are more likely to post online reviews of restaurants that are higher status, controlling for their familiarity and liking of the restaurant. Second, we found that individual differences in status consumption motivation predicted increased desire to post reviews. Third, we conducted an experiment and found that participants were more likely to review the higher versus lower status restaurant.

A model of the relationships between the Big Five personality traits and the motivations to deliver word-of-mouth online

The goal of this research is to establish the relationships between the Big Five personality traits ? Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness ? and the motivations to deliver electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in the social media. The research method was based on a survey administered to 262 subjects, mostly students and young professionals. The personality traits that are most related to eWOM are Extraversion (that influences the need for social appreciation and Positive self-enhancement) and Openness to experience (that determines the concern for others and the desire to help good companies). Conscientiousness has a negative relationship with the tendency to Vent negative feelings about a bad buy, while Neuroticism has a slight influence on the motivation to get Social benefits and Self-enhancement. Knowing the prevalent personality traits and motivations of the eWOM transmitters, the company communication strategist can figure out the most proper ways to approach them. This paper is one of the few that throughly investigates the relationship between personality traits and the intrinsic motivations to write online reviews about companies and brands.

Customer engagement and online reviews

This study aims at understanding the role of customer engagement in writing online reviews by shoppers with specific focus on mobile devices for shopping. Mobile devices are becoming first screen for the customers and are being used by marketers to have interactive communication making it more suitable for building customer engagement. The research in this space however is in a very nascent stage. Current study is one of the first few empirical studies exploring the role of customer engagement in writing online reviews. The study explores mediating role of customer engagement in satisfaction - online review intention and trust - online review intention relationships. Further moderating role of trust and satisfaction levels in customer engagement - online review intention is explored. This study contributes to marketing literature in the space of customer engagement, online reviews and mobile shopping behaviour. Further, this study provides a framework to managers for motivating the customers in writing online reviews. Also recommendations for retailers in exploiting customer engagement on mobile platforms are provided to address merchants and advertisers for better management of a new technology.

An integrated model for predicting consumer's intention to write online reviews

For marketers, consumers’ increasing use of online reviews in arriving at purchase decisions is a double edged sword. On one hand, it presents opportunity for manufacturers and sellers to be highlighted for their good work, but at the same time, there remains a possibility of negative review impacting goodwill and reputation. Hence, it is important for managers to identify factors that impact consumers’ intentions to write online reviews. This research delves into this aspect by trying to identify the factors that impact reviews writing intentions of consumers for restaurants. The study extends the theory of planned behaviour with additions of variables such as ego involvement, taking vengeance and helping a restaurant. For this, 252 valid responses were obtained, and structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model. Results indicate that perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, ego involvement and taking vengeance are significant predictors of intention to write online reviews for the restaurants.

Prosumer motivations for electronic word-of-mouth communication behaviors

Purpose“Prosumers” (combining “producer” and “consumers”) describes consumers’ ability to openly share their product/service experiences and thereby drive sales and digital marketing. Understanding what motivates active prosumers to engage in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and share or review their hotel experiences online can help organizations empathize with consumers and use their messages to co-create value. Identifying prosumers’ motivators can enable companies to properly target them as resources for review or consumer feedback studies. This paper aims to investigate the influence of motivators (intrinsic and extrinsic), service quality and age on consumers’ eWOM communication behaviors.Design/methodology/approachA panel of 204 travelers was surveyed regarding their hotel travel experiences, propensity to write online reviews, preferred review-writing platform, motivations for writing reviews and impressions of service quality. To test the hypotheses, a multivariate regression analysis was performed with eWOM as the dependent variable. Differences in eWOM as a function of preferred review platform were also tested using ANOVA, with a multiple comparison analysis that underlines the differences between prosumers who prefer different types of review platforms and their eWOM behaviors.FindingsBoth intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, as well as service reliability, had a significant influence on eWOM behavior, while service tangibility had a negative relationship. Additionally, prosumers’ engagement in eWOM about their hospitality experience differed according to their preferred review platform.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of the analysis underline the importance of consumer motivations and of satisfaction with service quality in the context of digital review behavior. For marketing and hospitality research, this shows the benefits of including not only individual characteristics and demographics when analyzing review behavior but also elements such as perceptions of service quality. Given the differences in how the dimensions of service quality affect consumers’ engagement in online review behavior, this represents a very important topic for research and can be included in future studies that analyze the consumer review behavior model.Practical implicationsRegarding the implications for practitioners, this study highlights the important role played by consumer satisfaction with service in the hospitality industry and its effect on their involvement in online reviews. Managers should be focused constantly on offering great service to their guests, while, at the same time, offering them motivations to engage in posting positive reviews about their vacation. Moreover, as the results of this study imply that various dimensions of service quality have a different impact, managers should focus especially on the aspects that consumers consider important and constantly include in their reviews, such as the tangibles dimension. The results of this study also have the potential to provide to businesses more information to improve the social aspects of vacationing, which can not only improve perceptions about service quality but can also have a positive influence on consumers’ motivations.Originality/valueThis paper develops a better understanding of what motivates people to engage in the eWOM communication behavior of writing online hotel reviews, by showing the effect of consumer motivations and service quality variables on prosumers’ engagement in online review behavior.

“Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’ reactions to solicited reviews

With the aim of enhancing their online reputation, several hospitality businesses have started soliciting their guests to write online reviews. Available studies have not yet evaluated the effects of this strategy. To fill this knowledge gap, this study draws on the theory of psychological reactance and investigates guests’ attitudinal and behavioral reactions to received solicitations. Evidence collected from a sample of Italian travelers indicates that soliciting reviews has both benefits and drawbacks: It increases the number of reviews for the business, but it also irritates a significant share of guests. Particularly high levels of irritation arise when a business explicitly asks its guests to write positive reviews. The implications of these findings for the reputation management strategy of hospitality businesses are discussed.

Feature network-driven quadrant mapping for summarizing customer reviews

With the rapid growth of e-commerce, customers increasingly write online reviews of the product they purchase. These customer reviews are one of the most valuable sources of information affecting selection of products or services. Summarizing these customer reviews is becoming an interesting area of research, inspiring researchers to develop a more condensed, concise summarization for users. However, most of the current efforts at summarization are based on general product features without feature’s relationship. As a result, these summaries either ignore feedback from customers or do a poor job of reflecting the opinions expressed in customer reviews. To remedy this summarization shortcoming, we propose a feature network-driven quadrant mapping that captures and incorporates opinions from customer reviews. Our focus is on construction of a feature network, which is based on co-occurrence and sematic similarities, and a quadrant display showing the opinions polarity of feature groups. Moreover, the proposed approach involves clustering similar product features, and thus, it is different from standard text summarization based on abstraction and extraction. The summarized results can help customers better understand the overall opinions about a product.

Reasons for using private blogs: Toward Korea tourism

The purpose of the study is to identify the important attributes of the motivational factors that influence Chinese students’ decision to write online reviews on social networking sites about Korea tourism after visiting major tourist attractions in Korea. A questionnaire survey was administered to 315 Chinese students attending universities in Korea and the resulting data were collected and analyzed. The results have important practical implications for tourism administrators and tour operators wishing to better understand the reasons for posting private blogs and how to encourage tourists intending to visit tourist attractions in Korea.

Asymmetry of Hotel Ratings on TripAdvisor: Evidence from Single- Versus Dual-Valence Reviews

ABSTRACTHotel ratings given by reviewers on travel-related social media sites are generally perceived as symmetric. Using the perspective of positive–negative asymmetry, we challenge this perception by comparing the prevalence of single- and dual-valence reviews associated with opposite hotel ratings. Drawing on the findings of a content analysis of 500 reviews of a hotel on TripAdvisor, followed by three-way log-linear analyses, we found that dual- (vs. single-) valence reviews appear more frequently in extremely negative (“terrible”) than extremely positive ratings (“excellent”), but less frequently in moderately negative (“poor”) than moderately positive ratings (“very good”). In addition, men posted more dual-valence reviews than women when the rating was “terrible.” The findings, which add to the positive–negative asymmetry literature, imply that users should not review an equal number of positive and negative reviews prior to their booking decisions, and that hoteliers should motivate more of their male guests to write online reviews.