What moderates the influence of extremely negative ratings? The role of review and reviewer characteristics

Abstract

Online customer reviews (OCRs) are increasingly used by travelers to inform their purchase decisions. However, the vast amount of reviews available nowadays may increase travellers' effort in information processing. In order to facilitate traveller's decisions, social commerce organizations must help travellers rapidly identify the most helpful reviews to reduce their cognitive effort. Academic literature has often documented that negative reviews are judged as helpful by consumers. However, extremely negative reviews are not always perceived as such. This study is the first that unveils what factors moderate the influence of extremely negative reviews on review helpfulness. The study has adopted a sample of 7,455 online customer reviews of hotels to test hypotheses. Findings show that reviews with extremely negative ratings are more likely to be helpful when the review is long and easy to read and when the reviewer is an expert or discloses his identity (geographical origin).

Social media brand engagement in the context of collaborative consumption: the case of AIRBNB

“…The co-creation of brand experiences is particularly relevant in the tourism industry (Fan et al 2020 ) and it is facilitated by social media (Ramaswamy and Ozcan 2016 ). Social media also plays a significant role in the development and growth of shared and collaborative consumption business models, allowing the co-creation of tourism experiences (Ha and Lee 2018 ; Filieri et al 2019 ) through peer-to-peer communications, campaigns around storytelling, and brand narratives based on people’s real stories and testimonials (Liu and Mattila 2017 ; Lu and Kandampully 2016 ). These experiences connect individuals to the brand and to other consumers who engage with the brand online (Harrigan et al 2018 ).…”

“…Given that there is a range of open questions raised by the growth of the sharing economy (Sundararajan 2019 ) and that the academic literature related to social media in tourism is still in its infancy (Fernandes and Fernandes 2018 ; Garrido-Moreno et al 2018 ; Filieri et al 2019 ), hospitality managers have received little scholarly guidance on how to incorporate social media in their brand strategies (Hudson et al 2015 ; Moon et al 2019 ), with the effects of branding on marketing variables related to social media, such as CBE, remaining largely unexplored (Liu and Mattila 2017 ). Although an increasing number of travel organizations are embracing social media, and its role in developing CBE in a tourism context is recognized, there is still a dearth of research on the topic, particularly when it comes to the limited, mainly qualitative studies, on shared and collaborative consumption business models (Liang et al 2018 ).…”

Online Review Helpfulness and Firms’ Financial Performance: An Empirical Study in a Service Industry

“…Last, there seems to be scarce collaboration between industry and academia to understand more about the antecedents that bring consumers to vote an OR as helpful and that contribute therefore to generate diagnostic and helpful eWOM from a company performance perspective. While scholars in different disciplines such as computer science and information systems [13,67,104,129], marketing [19,109] and travel and hospitality (e.g., [39,43,46,82,93,127]) are trying to make sense of those antecedents, still there seems to be little use of the knowledge generated so far for business intelligence purposes and better decision-making in hospitality. Conversely, the triangulation of different techniques and types of data (big and small, structured and unstructured) might improve the business intelligence of many firms operating within the hospitality sector [97] and help managers gain some insights on the heuristics [128] and selective eWOM processing practices [55] that online consumers adopt to deal with eWOM to purchase hospitality and accommodation services in today's digital environment.…”

Gestão da reputação on-line pelos meios de hospedagem: Uma análise das respostas ao EWOM negativo

“…Um tipo específico de eWOM seriam os comentários online dos consumidores (ou Online Consumer Reviews -OCRs), que podem ser compreendidos como qualquer apreciação (positiva, negativa ou neutra) a respeito de um produto, serviço ou organização. Tais avaliações podem ser acompanhadas ou não por notas, sendo publicadas em plataformas online distintas, como no site da empresa ou de terceiros, em fóruns ou comunidades virtuais, ou ainda, nas mídias sociais (Filieri, Raguseo, & Vitari, 2018).…”

“…Os resultados de uma pesquisa realizada por Park e Lee (2009) indicaram que os efeitos sobre a percepção de utilidade da avaliação compartilhada eram maiores quando o eWOM era negativo, e quando o site consultado já possuía uma reputação consolidada, no caso de bens de experiência, se comparados ao consumo de mercadorias. Outros estudos posteriores igualmente constataram que os comentários negativos teriam uma influência mais forte na avaliação de uma experiência de serviço pelo consumidor, se comparados aos positivos (Yang & Mai, 2010;Xie, Miao, Kuo, & Lee, 2011;Filieri et al, 2018).…”