Responding to negative hotel reviews: A cross-linguistic perspective on online rapport-management

Cenni, Irene; Goethals, Patrick

doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2020.100430

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Language use, “the continuous making of linguistic choices” ( Verschueren, 1999 , p. 55), can be influenced by various factors, among which cultural context is one of the most important. The cultural variations in the use of linguistic resources have already been greatly recognized in established studies (e.g., Yang, 2013 ; Zhu et al, 2019b ; Cenni and Goethals, 2020 ; Feng and Ren, 2020 ); for example, more hedges and boosters have been found in the US corporation discourse compared to the Chinese ( Lee, 2020 ). From the perspective of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions ( Hofstede, 2001 ), such as individualism vs. collectivism, Kim et al (2018) find that customers from Western countries tend to be more positive in their ratings.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The research literature on online consumer reviews has mainly focused on their economic value ( Gong et al, 2012 ; Li and Wang, 2015 ; Wei and Zheng, 2018 ), their utility ( Mudambi and Schuff, 2010 ; Skalicky, 2013 ; Filieri, 2015 ), the effects of cultural background ( Kim et al, 2018 ; Kim, 2019 ), and more recently, a few other papers discussing the role of culture in exploring the determinants of the “perceived helpfulness” of online consumer reviews ( Biswas et al, 2021 ; Filieri and Mariani, 2021 ). Other studies have investigated various linguistic features such as rhetorical moves, impoliteness, linguistic adaptation and mitigation involved in online reviews ( Virtanen, 2017 ; Ren, 2018 ; Cenni and Goethals, 2020 ; Feng and Ren, 2020 ; Ho, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A cross-cultural analysis on the Interpersonal meaning of attitude resources in Chinese and English online consumer reviews

Wang

Zhang²

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Online consumer reviews benefit not only buyers but also sellers in the virtual market place. For consumers, they can realize their attitudes to products through the various lexical attitudinal resources indicating emotion and judgment, and for sellers they act as a form of customer feedback which can enhance the relationship between buyers and sellers. In that sense they improve the operation of the market price mechanism. The purpose of this study is to investigate the Interpersonal meanings realized through the attitude resources drawn upon by English and Chinese online consumers. Based on the Appraisal System, especially the Attitude System in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this study conducts a contrastive analysis of the attitudinal resources employed by consumers in Amazon UK and Amazon China. These features are analyzed by using the UAM CorpusTool to annotate the relevant resources, with similarities and differences in the general distribution of attitudinal resources identified, and any potential underlying reasons explained. The results of this study suggest that different features and distribution of attitudinal resources are employed in English and Chinese online consumer reviews, and that more attitudinal units are involved in English online consumer reviews than in the Chinese versions. Consumers from the United Kingdom also seem to use more affect resources than Chinese consumers in their online reviews, while Chinese consumers employ slightly more judgment resources and more appreciation resources. Possible factors that may cause such differences are examined in terms of the differing contexts of cultures.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A cross-cultural analysis on the Interpersonal meaning of attitude resources in Chinese and English online consumer reviews

Wang

Zhang²

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…The study was a cross-linguistic analysis of 100 reviews in each language; the data were coded manually using NVivo. Cenni and Goethals (2020) conducted another study on negative hotel reviews from a cross-linguistic perspective. Around 300 responses written in English, Dutch, and Italian were analyzed to examine the texts" discourse characteristics.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Online Arabic Complaints in Hotel Reviews on TripAdvisor: A Discourse-Pragmatic Study

Alqreeni¹,

Mahzari²

2022

WJEL

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Although much work has explored Arabic complaints in face-to-face (FTF) communication, the subject has received less scholarly attention in computer mediated communication (CMC). In response to the lack of studies on online Arabic complaints, the present study aimed to identify the types of speech acts employed in Arabic complaints on TripAdvisor, the specific topics evaluated in negative reviews, and the adjectives used to convey the reviewers’ evaluations. The study was conducted on hotels in Saudi Arabia, with a sample comprising 246 reviews of 35 hotels in Riyadh, Al-Khobar, and Jeddah. Only 5-star hotels were included. The data were collected manually and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively using Microsoft Excel. The results showed that when writing negative reviews on TripAdvisor, Arabs used various speech acts to express their complaints; the most frequently used were retrospective speech acts that included mostly negative evaluations with some positive evaluations. Additionally, the topics most frequently evaluated negatively were services, interpersonal relations, and accommodation; such negative evaluations featured various adjectives with some adverbs to intensify the negative review. Regarding positive evaluations, location was the most frequent positively evaluated aspect, followed by services and accommodation. The results also demonstrated that Arabs rarely used opening and closing speech acts in their negative reviews on TripAdvisor. Finally, the study’s limitations and suggestions are discussed in this paper for the benefit of further research.

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“…With increasing interest in hotel responses among linguists, recent studies have examined hotel responses from a cross linguistic perspective. Cenni and Goethals (2020) investigate rhetorical moves in hotel responses to negative reviews from hotels in three cities-London, Amsterdam and Rome-on TripAdvisor. Beyond Europe, Morrow and Yamanouchi (2020) conducted a comparative analysis between the West and East, focusing on apologies in rhetorical moves between English and Japanese hotel responses collected from hotels in the United States and Japan.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Virtual Rapport on TripAdvisor: Discourse in Hotel Responses to Negative Online Reviews

Taw

Paramasivam

Libert

et al. 2022

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Digital technology has immensely transformed communication, and social media facilitates online feedback mechanisms, empowering consumers' voices via online reviews. This has led to the pervasively growing influence of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on customers' purchase intentions, as negative online reviews can be detrimental to business performance. Therefore, digital business engagement on online platforms is essential to ensure customer satisfaction and manage online reputation. Building on Spencer-Oatey's (2008) Rapport Management Model (RMM), this qualitative study explores the rapport management strategies used by eighteen Malaysian five-, four-and threestar hotels to respond to negative online reviews, from the perspective of the RMM discourse domain. The hotel responses were collected from TripAdvisor, using purposeful sampling and analysed with Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis. The findings show that the five-and four-star hotels employed higher frequencies of moves in their responses to complaints in negative reviews. Some four-and three-star hotels took a more confrontational approach by using the sub-move 'denying problems'. In terms of RMM rapport orientation, this sub-move can be rapport-challenging in customer relationships. This study highlights that managing negative reviews more efficiently for service recovery on online platforms is essential to maintain customer relationships and establish a positive online corporate reputation. More generally, the findings provide insights on cultural rapport management strategies used in one Southeast Asian country-Malaysia.

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Responding to negative hotel reviews: A cross-linguistic perspective on online rapport-management

Cited by 15 publications

References 24 publications

A cross-cultural analysis on the Interpersonal meaning of attitude resources in Chinese and English online consumer reviews

A cross-cultural analysis on the Interpersonal meaning of attitude resources in Chinese and English online consumer reviews

Exploring Online Arabic Complaints in Hotel Reviews on TripAdvisor: A Discourse-Pragmatic Study

Managing Virtual Rapport on TripAdvisor: Discourse in Hotel Responses to Negative Online Reviews

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