This article examines the promise of market democratization conveyed by consumer rating and review websites in the restaurant industry. Based on interviews with website administrators and data from the main French platforms, we show that review websites contribute to the democratization of restaurant criticism, which first started in the 1970s, both by including a greater variety of restaurants in the reviews, and by broadening participation, opening restaurant reviewing to all. However, this twofold democratic ambition conflicts with the need to produce fair and helpful recommendations, leading review websites to seek compromises between these two dimensions.!
In recent years, web sites where individual consumers can rate and review goods and services have mushroomed all over the Internet. Restaurants are particularly affected by online reviewing. If the impact of online consumer reviews (OCRs) on the demand side of markets is now well understood and measured, few studies examine the reception of this new evaluation method by those who are assessed. Based on interviews with French restaurant managers, our research shows that OCRs systems reconfigure relations of accountability in the restaurant industry. We use the notion of reactivity to describe the mechanisms through which the new evaluation system transforms the activity of restaurants. We also examine the affects surrounding the reception of ratings and reviews by restaurant managers and the moral criteria that accompany their discourses on online reviews. Many restaurants consider online reviews as a brutal and hypocritical mode of judgment. The judgment produced by online ratings and reviews is not easily borne by restaurant managers, because it challenges the conventions of quality they had previously internalized as legitimate, that is, those produced by professional experts. We interpret this ambivalent reception as the unfinished movement of transforming a performative reputation device into a legitimate evaluation institution.
This article examines the role of Internet based labour market intermediaries in coordinating job seeker/employee interactions. A twofold analysis examines on the one hand the matchmaking tools determining applicants" access to job ads, and on the other, the content of ads posted on the web. Observations reveal that the information available to applicants is subject to a high degree of filtering achieved through the use of pre-defined lists, keywords or more frequently, input fields. A comparative analysis of job offers posted on the Internet with those posted in newspapers shows that search engine toolkits have a considerable impact on ad content which is generally more standardized and quantified in the former than in the latter. Furthermore, a comparison between French and British ads demonstrates that the institutional context influences the actions taken by job boards. In contrast to Great Britain, France more frequently uses matching markers aimed at selecting applicants than those providing detailed information on the job offer. Today, French job boards thus contribute in weakening applicants" position on labour markets.3
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