Is it worth responding? The effect of different response strategies on the attitude toward the reviewed hotel

Date
2014-06-01
Authors
Waiguny, M
Kniesel, H
Diehl, S
Supervisor
Item type
Conference Contribution
Degree name
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
European Advertising Academy
Abstract

Complaint management literature suggests that corporate response to consumer grievance is an important issue. But within practice the corporate act of hotels responding to (negative) online reviews remains modest. Thus, we tested experimentally the significance of review response as well as the perception and impact-of different response strategies to online hotel reviews. Attribution theory provides the theoretical basis toward employing a 2 (response voice) x 2 (respondent position) x 2 (source identification) x 1 (control group) experimental design. Our results indicate that the worst strategy for a hotel is not responding to a negative online review. In addition, readers of online reviews who attribute the content of the response to external motivations are more likely to improve their attitude towards the hotel. This external attribution and, by extension, level of attitude toward the reviewed hotel could be leveraged by the response-voice and the relative respondent position.

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Source
ICORIA 2014, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2014-06-26 to 2014-06-28
DOI
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NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in (see Citation). The original publication is available at (see Publisher's Version).