Attitude toward social media reviews and restaurant visit intention: a Bangladeshi perspective

Abstract

PurposeWhile the usage of social media reviews has become increasingly popular in recent years, few studies in this context of Bangladesh have investigated its impact on restaurant visit intention. Therefore, this study aims to explain the role of attitude toward social media reviews in customers' restaurant visit intention from the perspective of Bangladesh. In doing so, predictors of attitude toward social media reviews were also ascertained and their indirect effects on restaurant visit intention were investigated.Design/methodology/approachA survey questionnaire was administered to 300 university students. A six-factor based measurement model was proposed, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used in testing the hypotheses represented by the model. Furthermore, a focus group discussion with 12 respondents was also held to assess how negative reviews on social media affect the customers' restaurant visit intention.FindingsThis study reveals that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trustworthiness and information quality of social media reviews are positively related to attitude toward using positive social media reviews for choosing a restaurant. Furthermore, attitude toward positive social media reviews directly contributes to the intention to visit restaurants. Besides, attitude toward social media reviews fully mediates the relationship of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and trustworthiness with restaurant visit intention, whereas it partially mediates the relationship between information quality and restaurant visit intention. Besides, results from focus group discussion revealed that customers typically trust negative reviews which reduce their intent to visit restaurants.Research limitations/implicationsThe samples chosen for this study belong only to a particular stratum of the population (students from a specific institution/university). Hence, the outcomes should be generalized with caution.Practical implicationsThis study provides practical guidelines for the restaurant marketers to formulate improved strategic decisions by tracking the restaurant customers' attitudes, behavioral intentions, sentiments and share of voice on social media platforms. The results of this study will encourage the restaurant marketers to build sustainable relationships with influential food bloggers to spawn positive electronic word of mouth (e-WOM).Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies in Bangladesh that have covered up a timely and untouched research area, providing empirical evidence regarding the effects of attitude toward social media reviews on restaurant visit intent in the context of a South Asian country like Bangladesh.

Users' attitude and intention to use mobile financial services in Bangladesh: an empirical study

“…Table 6 shows that zero does not appear between the indirect effects' confidence intervals, providing further empirical evidence for the mediation effect (Hayes, 2017;Popy and Bappy, 2020). As a result, H7 (a-d) have been supported.…”

“…TAM posits that attitude is the path through which PU and ease of use affect users' behavioral intention (Davis et al, 1989). Prior studies further showed that consumers' PT positively affects adoption intention through their attitude toward adoption (Popy and Bappy, 2020). To the best of the authors' knowledge, the mediating role of attitude in the relationship between barriers of acceptance and behavioral intention has not been studied adequately in the prior studies.…”

“…For instance, Legris et al (2003) argued that TAM 1 and TAM 2 models, together, could not adequately explain the customers' attitude and technology usage intention. Therefore, scholars have always supported incorporating context-specific new determinants in the TAM (Popy and Bappy, 2020).…”

“…PEOU is pondered as the variable to increase clarity, understandability and flexibility in using new technology (Segars and Grover, 1993). Studies showed that the learning ease brings confidence among the users about the experience, resulting in a positive attitude toward an innovation (Popy and Bappy, 2020). Extant works of the literature have found that the perception of ease leads the users to form a positive attitude toward adopting several technologies/systems, such as m-commerce (Indarsin and Ali, 2017;Ghazali et al, 2018), mobile banking (Shaikh and Karjaluoto, 2015), cellular and contactless mpayment (Chen, 2008), online banking (Inegbedion, 2018) and many more.…”

“…Previously, scholars used the construct "trust" to strengthen the TAM (Harland and Nienaber, 2014) and found that it is a significant predictor of customer attitude toward accepting innovations (Popy and Bappy, 2020). In particular, the role of trust in influencing users' attitude and intention is predominantly extensive in the context of e-commerce or m-payment, where uncertainty and risk have substantial effects on users (Ghazali et al, 2018).…”