eWOM

Author(s):  
Juan Pedro Mellinas ◽  
Sofía Reino

It is difficult to find a traveler who has not written and/or read an online review at any stage of their travel. Most people will not book a hotel if this has no reviews and/or will not choose a destination before reading some opinions from other users. Tourism professionals can gain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic relationships and key influential factors which are relevant to online reviews. A single business can have thousands of reviews. This creates a situation of information overload for hotel managers, who encounter themselves with increasingly larger numbers of information to analyze and act upon. The ability to effectively analyze data, using in occasions dedicated software becomes a crucial aspect of hotel management. The chapter ends with a reflection on how eWOM is leading to the generation of a new approach to business management.

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (7) ◽  
pp. 2739-2758 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zili Zhang ◽  
Hengyun Li ◽  
Fang Meng ◽  
Yuanshuo Li

Purpose This paper aims to examine the influences of the number of hotel management responses and especially the textual similarity in hotel management responses to online reviews on hotel online booking. Design/methodology/approach This study used the data from 437 hotels in New York City on Expedia. The data specifically include online reviews, management responses and real-time number of online hotel bookings, which were merged to create one dataset for this study. To calculate the management response similarity, three widely recognized text mining functions of calculating textual similarity were adopted in this model. Fixed-effect panel data model was then used to examine the influence of management response to consumer online reviews on online hotel booking volume. Findings The empirical results demonstrate that the number of management responses to consumer online reviews does not significantly affect hotel booking; compared to none or only one management response, or management responses with low similarity, management responses with high similarity can significantly reduce the hotel booking on Expedia. Practical implications This study suggests that the similarity of management responses influences customers’ hotel booking, and hotel managers should avoid providing too similar management responses. Originality/value First, this study, for the first time, proposes the concept of management response similarity and its measurement methods. Second, this study takes an initial attempt to empirically test the influence of response similarity on hotel booking by using secondary data online.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 307-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linchi Kwok ◽  
Karen L. Xie ◽  
Tori Richards

Purpose The purposes of this study are to synthesize the current research findings reported in major hospitality and tourism journals and to discuss the knowledge gaps where additional research endeavors are needed. Design/methodology/approach A systematic review approach was adopted to analyze 67 research articles about online reviews that were published between January 2000 and July 2015 in seven major hospitality and tourism journals. Findings This study presents a thematic framework of online review research, which was advanced by integrating the interactions among quantitative evaluation features, verbal evaluation features, reputation features and social features of online reviews with important outcomes of consumer decision-making and business performance. The thematic framework helps researchers identify the areas in extant hospitality literature of online reviews and point out possible directions for future studies. Research limitations/implications The systematic review approach has a qualitative nature, where relevant literature was interpreted based on the authors’ domain knowledge and expertise. Practical implications Practitioners can gain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic relationships among the key influential factors in online reviews, as presented in the thematic framework of online review research. Accordingly, managers will be able to develop effective strategies to leverage the positive impacts of online reviews to the business outcomes. Originality/value This systematic review synthesizes the findings reported in most recent publications (January 2000-July 2015; also including “Online First” articles) in seven major hospitality and tourism journals and develops an integrated research framework, anchoring on four meta-research questions and showing the dynamic relationships among the key players/factors/themes in online review research. This framework provides a visual diagram to practitioners for a better understanding of the relevant literature and assists researchers in developing new research questions for future studies.


Author(s):  
Dewanta Fachrureza

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>This research departs from the curiosity of researchers to find out the extent to which online customer reviews are used at the Ritz Carlton hotel, because hotel management responds well even to the extraordinary in responding to online customer reviews, especially from TripAdvisor. The purpose of this study is to develop and understand the extent to which online review customer reviews are used from TripAdvisor to the department of the front office at the Ritz Carlton Hotel Jakarta. Conclusions from this study are important for hotels to maintain and improve the level of customer satisfaction to improve the quality of hotel services. The researcher also gave several suggestions which stated that there must be a position of work that is responsible for ensuring that all online reviews will be answered and evaluated. In addition, the hotel must invite more guests to comment on TripAdvisor.<br />Keywords: Customer, Customer Satisfaction, Online Review, Front Office Department</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 1663-1685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xun Xu

Purpose This study aims to investigate the online customer review behavior and determinants of overall satisfaction with hotels of travelers in various travel group compositions. Design/methodology/approach The author collected data from online reviews of travelers in various travel group compositions from 600 hotels in 100 of the largest cities in the USA from Booking.com and used latent semantic analysis (LSA) to identify the positive and negative factors from online reviews of travelers in various travel group compositions. Then, text regression was used to determine the influential factors of overall satisfaction of travelers in various travel group compositions. Findings It was found in this study that not all the positive and negative textual factors mined from travelers’ online reviews significantly influenced their overall satisfaction. In addition, the determinants of traveler satisfaction were different when travelers were in different travel group compositions. Research limitations/implications The author found similar online review behavior, but different basic, excitement and performance factors of travelers in different travel group compositions. Practical implications This study helps hoteliers understand customers’ perception of the specific attributes of their products and services, which provides a guideline for businesses to design the priority rule to improve these corresponding attributes and use market segmentation strategy when dealing with customers in different travel group compositions. Originality/value The author examined and compared the online review behavior and determinants of satisfaction using the factors mined from online reviews between travelers in various travel group compositions. This study combined customer ratings with textual reviews and predicted customer ratings from the factors extracted from textual reviews using LSA and text regression.


Author(s):  
Agne Bendaraviciute ◽  
Philipp Wassler ◽  
Thi Hong Hai Nguyen ◽  
Simon Thomas

This study was taken as the understanding of management responses remains scarcely understood in theory and practice, especially concerning consumer preferences. This study aims at examining consumer preferences of the action frames and language styles adopted in hotel management responses to online reviews. A multi-method approach, using discrete choice experiments followed by in-depth interviews, was employed. Findings show that past action frames in management responses are preferred by customers due to the certainty, trustworthiness and detailed information provided. Moreover, literal is favoured over figurative language style due to perceived professionalism and conciseness. The current study helps hotel management to further understand consumer preferences of management responses to online reviews, especially regarding action frames and language styles.


Author(s):  
Bing Wu

AbstractAlthough some studies have explored massive open online courses (MOOCs) discussion forums and MOOC online reviews separately, studies of both aspects are insufficient. Based on the theory of self-determination, this paper proposes research hypotheses that MOOC learning progress has a direct impact on MOOC online reviews and an indirect influence on MOOC online reviews through social interactions in discussion forums, as well. Coursera the largest MOOC platform, is selected as the empirical research object, and data from learners who participated in the MOOC discussion forum and provided MOOC online reviews from August 2016 to December 2019 are obtained from the most popular course, “Machine Learning”. After processing, data from 4376 learners are obtained. Then, according to research hypotheses, multi regression models are constructed accordingly. The results show that the length of MOOC online review text is affected by the MOOC learning progress, the number of discussion forum posts, the number of follow, the online review sentiment and MOOC rating. This study highlights the main factors that affect MOOC online reviews. As a result, some suggestions are put forward for the construction of MOOC.


2021 ◽  
pp. 109634802110303
Author(s):  
Hengyun Li ◽  
Fang Meng ◽  
Simon Hudson

The research aims to examine how positive review disconfirmation (i.e., a positive deviance between a hotel consumer’s poststay evaluation and the average review rating by prior consumers) affects subsequent consumers’ willingness to post online reviews and their own review ratings. By employing an experimental research method, this study reveals that positive review disconfirmation increases hotel guests’ willingness to post online reviews, and increases their online review ratings through the mechanism of concern for others, demonstrating an act of altruism. In addition, comparatively the positive review disconfirmation effects are stronger when the variance of prior review ratings is smaller. This study enhances the online review social influence literature, and the consumer’s altruistic motivation of posting online reviews.


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (7) ◽  
pp. 1479-1498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daraneekorn Supanti ◽  
Ken Butcher ◽  
Liz Fredline

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to understand how hotel managers perceive the benefits that may accrue to employees and hotels through their engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Design/methodology/approach – In-depth interviews with 23 hotel managers, representing various functional responsibilities, were undertaken across four provinces in Thailand. The sample included local and international chain hotels. Findings – Hotel managers from all functional areas and levels acknowledged that CSR substantially enhanced the employer–employee relationship. Five themes depicting the beneficial effects were identified: a relationship unifying process, having fun, feeling pride, developing skills and building teamwork. These themes reflect three core factors of emotional responses, social capital and task-related skills. Practical implications – The paper illustrates that CSR activities can be customised to elicit specific effects that will engender beneficial outcomes for both hotel management and employees. Originality/value – This paper provides new insights into how hotel managers perceive the employer-employee relationship is enhanced through CSR engagement. In addition, the paper presents a practical model that will be of interest to both academics and practitioners.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong Zhang ◽  
Pengkun Wu ◽  
Chong Wu

Purpose The importance of online reviews on online hotel booking has been widely acknowledged. However, not all online reviews affect consumers equally. Compared with common online reviews, key online reviews (KORs) have a greater influence on consumers' decisions and online hotel booking. This study takes the first step to investigate the factors affecting the identification of KORs and the role of KORs in online hotel booking.Design/methodology/approach To test the research hypotheses, this study develops a crawler to obtain 551,600 online reviews of 650 hotels in ten representative large cities in China. This study first uses a binary logistic regression to identify KORs by combining review content quality and reviewer characteristics and then uses a log-regression model to investigate the role of KORs in online hotel booking.Findings This study mined the factors affecting the identification of KORs by analyzing review contents and reviewer characteristics. Our results revealed that KORs play a mediating role in the effects of review content and reviewer characteristics on online hotel booking.Originality/value This study focuses on KORs, which have received limited attention in research but are important to practitioners. Specifically, this study investigates the antecedents and consequences of KORs. Our results enable hotel managers to manage online reviews effectively, particularly KORs.


10.1068/a3267 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 805-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donggen Wang ◽  
Harmen Oppewal ◽  
Harry Timmermans

Information overload is a well-known problem of conjoint choice models when respondents have to evaluate a large number of attributes and/or attribute levels. In this paper we develop an alternative conjoint modelling approach, called pairwise conjoint analysis. It differs from conventional conjoint choice and preference models in that the attributes of choice alternatives or choice contexts are not varied simultaneously, but in pairs. Properties of the design strategy are discussed. The new approach is illustrated by using activity engagement choice as an example.


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