Purpose - The purpose of this study was to uncover potential thematic mismatches between textual comments in online hotel reviews, on the one hand, and rating categories in those reviews, consumer experience scales, and marketing tools, on the other; and to draw attention to challenges that these mismatches pose for hotel managers and researchers. Design/Methodology/Approach - An in-depth, qualitative, contextual content analysis of online reviews was conducted. Findings - Thematic mismatches were found for all three comparisons. The textual comments are broader in topic than the rating categories of the platform studied. Conversely, textual comments are thematically narrower than the studied consumer experience scales and marketing tools. These mismatches can lead to suboptimal decision-making by hotel managers especially when they are pressured by a large and increasing number of reviews. Originality of the research - Past research has not drawn attention to the thematic mismatches between textual comments in online customer reviews and other sources of information available to hotel managers, nor has it discussed the challenges hotel managers may face when relying heavily on online customer comments. The findings also provide input for researchers to rethink how best to measure consumers’ hotel experience.

The purpose of this research is to understand how current marketing research conceptualises natural and traditional products – products that strongly attract consumer attention and capture large and growing market shares yet remain vague and weakly defined by a regulatory framework. The analysis is conducted on systematically selected research articles published in relevant journals over the past two decades. The results show that the natural products are mostly defined by the way they are produced and the ingredients they do not contain, while no consensus was reached for the traditional products. Furthermore, not only is the concept of traditional defined by an unusually large number of themes, but the themes also vary considerably depending on stakeholder group from which they originate, indicating an inevitable communication problem between these groups. The results also show that despite attempts by marketers to link the meanings of the two types of products, the themes in the definitions of natural and traditional products are different and overlap only sporadically. These findings serve as a step toward creating better academic conceptualizations and a more specific regulatory framework for natural and traditional products that will reduce the likelihood of misleading business practises and confusion among consumers and researchers.

The mission of this research is to analyze how small producers of natural and traditional products can strengthen their position in the market and bring positive change to themselves and their stakeholders by establishing a brand and making it stronger through storytelling, organic certification and providing tourist experience. The study was approached inductively, by applying in-depth multiple source analysis on an identified exemplar case. The results show that creating a brand story and getting and presenting organic label are important factors for the market success, but yield limited results without consumers having the opportunity to experience the brand and its story. Producers of natural and traditional products are adviced to think of ways of how to provide consumer experience and how to get consumers in touch with their products, i.e. how to turn a non touristic business into a touristic one. This will have the strongest effect on their own sales, but will also benefit the other stakeholders the most.

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