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The Internet has changed consumer decision-making and influenced business behaviour. User-generated product information is abundant and readily available. This paper argues that user-generated content can be efficiently utilised for business intelligence using data science and develops an approach to demonstrate the methods and benefits of the different techniques.

Using Python Selenium, Beautiful Soup and various text mining approaches in R to access, retrieve and analyse user-generated content, we argue that (1) companies can extract information about the product attributes that matter most to consumers and (2) user-generated reviews enable the use of text mining results in combination with other demographic and statistical information (e.g. ratings) as an efficient input for competitive analysis.

The paper shows that combining different types of data (textual and numerical data) and applying and combining different methods can provide organisations with important business information and improve business performance.

The paper shows that combining different types of data (textual and numerical data) and applying and combining different methods can provide organisations with important business information and improve business performance.

The study makes several contributions to the marketing and management literature, mainly by illustrating the methodological advantages of text mining and accompanying statistical analysis, the different types of distilled information and their use in decision-making.

Engaging in webcare, i.e. responding to online reviews, can positively affect consumer attitudes, intentions and behavior. Research is often scarce or inconsistent regarding the effects of specific webcare strategies on business performance. Therefore, this study tests whether and how several webcare strategies affect hotel bookings.

We apply machine learning classifiers to secondary data (webcare messages) to classify webcare variables to be included in a regression analysis looking at the effect of these strategies on hotel bookings while controlling for possible confounds such as seasonality and hotel-specific effects.

The strategies that have a positive effect on bookings are directing reviewers to a private channel, being defensive, offering compensation and having managers sign the response. Webcare strategies to be avoided are apologies, merely asking for more information, inviting customers for another visit and adding informal non-verbal cues. Strategies that do not appear to affect future bookings are expressing gratitude, personalizing and having staff members (rather than managers) sign webcare.

These findings help managers optimize their webcare strategy for better business results and develop automated webcare.

We look into several commonly used and studied webcare strategies that affect actual business outcomes, being that most previous research studies are experimental or look into a very limited set of strategies.

This paper aims to investigate textual characteristics of customer reviews that motivate companies to respond (sentiment negativity and sentiment deviation) and how aspects of these company responses (response intensity, length and tailoring) affect subsequent customer review quality (comprehensiveness and readability) over time.

Leveraging a large data set from a leading app website (Shopify), the authors combine text mining, natural language processing (NLP) and big data analysis to examine the antecedents and outcomes of online company responses to reviews.

This study finds that companies are more likely to respond to reviews with more negative sentiment and higher sentiment deviation scores. Furthermore, while longer company responses improve review comprehensiveness over time, they do not have a significant influence on review readability; meanwhile, more tailored company responses improve readability but not comprehensiveness over time. In addition, the intensity (volume) of company responses does not affect subsequent review quality in either comprehensiveness or readability.

This paper expands on the understanding of online company responses within the digital marketplace – specifically, apps – and provides a new and broader perspective on the motivations and effects of online company responses to customer reviews. The study also extends beyond the short-term focus of prior works and adds to literature on long-term effects of online company responses to subsequent reviews. The findings provide valuable insights for companies (especially those with apps) to enhance their online communication strategies and customer engagement.

The authors investigate the varying impact of three categories of conflicting consumer reviews (i.e. conflicting opinions on attributes of a product item, conflicting ratings of an item and the intensity of conflicting reviews of an item) on the potential customers' perceived informativeness, which is expected to affect the perceived correct purchase.

To test their proposed hypotheses, the authors conducted an experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design for each conflict type comprising two levels (low vs high).

The results of this study found that conflicting opinions on product attributes can enhance potential customers' perceptions of informativeness and subsequent correct purchase decisions while conflicting ratings and the intensity of conflicting reviews can diminish potential customers' perceptions of informativeness. In addition, conflicting ratings negatively moderate the effect of conflicting attributes on perceived informativeness such that the positive effect of conflicting attributes on perceived informativeness will be less prominent when conflicting ratings are present (vs absent).

While potential customers are browsing product descriptions, reviews and comments from other purchasers are also playing a role in influencing a potential customer's purchase decision. However, given the different experiences and temperaments of individuals, the subjective remarks and ratings of individuals are sometimes inconsistent or even conflicting, which can lead to confusion among potential customers. The authors categorize the positive or negative effects of the three conflicting reviews based on the two dimensions of ease of capture and product diagnosticity. The findings can help platforms optimize the display of product reviews to help potential customers make more accurate purchase decisions.

This study aimed to develop an in-depth understanding of the outcomes of servant leadership at the team and organizational levels. It reviews the relationship between servant leadership and its team- and organizational-level outcomes, and examines the mediation and moderation effect of the relationship. It further identifies the mechanism by which servant leadership is beneficial to the organization.

A systematic literature review is conducted, focused on 52 articles published between 2012 and 2022. Content analysis and descriptive analysis were used to respond to the research questions.

A new conceptual model was developed to better understand the outcomes, mediators and moderators of servant leadership at team and organization level.

Future research should further explore outcomes of servant leadership at team and organizational levels and test how mediators affect the relationship between servant leadership and associated outcomes.

This study provides a framework for leaders on how servant leadership contributes to teams and organizations, and how a leader applies servant leadership.

This systematic review presents a new model that builds on existing research into servant leadership and its impact on team and organizational levels completed in the past decade. To date, there have been no reviews of servant leadership that focus only on outcomes at the team and organizational levels using a widely recognized database.

Recent literature identifies the importance of influencer-brand fit, a congruence between the narrative of the social media influencer (SMI) and the branded product being reviewed, on purchase intentions. In creating brand-related content, SMIs can post content that can be either sponsored by the brand or unsponsored. This research merges these literature streams to examine how influencer-brand fit impacts purchase decisions and whether sponsorship status moderates this relationship.

Using a 2 (poor vs good influencer-brand fit) × 2 (sponsored vs unsponsored post) experimental design (n = 198), the relationship between influencer-brand fit and purchase intention, the mediating role of SMI trust and the moderating role of perceived sponsorship are tested. The PROCESS macro was used to analyze direct and indirect paths.

The results demonstrate that influencer trust mediates the relationship between influencer-brand fit and purchase intention, highlighting the importance of a congruent influencer and brand image in both increasing influencer trust and purchase intentions. Surprisingly, despite the reductions in purchase intentions from conducting a poor-fitting review, purchase intentions are the same between a poor-fitting unsponsored review and a good fitting sponsored review.

Decision-makers of both corporations and SMI personal brands should consider influencer-brand fit when selecting SMI partners to sponsor and brands to work with, respectively, and should aim for good fit between both parties. SMIs should avoid conducting sponsored, poor-fitting product reviews to limit reductions in trust. Influencers seeking to branch out of their area of expertise can initially consider unsponsored content before venturing into sponsored partnerships. Companies seeking to widen their reach through poor-fitting SMIs should consider alternative strategies to sponsorship.

As sponsored content is common, it is necessary to merge the influencer-brand fit and influencer sponsorship literature. Additionally, this study considers the mediating role of influencer trust, an important variable in predicating purchase intentions as well as helping SMI grow their audience.

Internal auditing assumes an increased responsibility for the evaluation of entity operations as a service to management and the board of directors. Quality assurance review is the process through which assurance is obtained that the internal auditing department’s work is done in accordance with the Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing. This study examines the current practices of quality assurance review in South Africa. Although not all organisations surveyed do perform internal auditing quality assurance reviews, the organisations that do, benefit from them. Various methods are used in practice to perform internal and external quality assurance reviews. This study provides information on the processes and procedures used in quality assurance review programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how hotels respond to online reviews on a third-party Web site (such as TripAdvisor) based on the hotel’s star rating.

Content analysis was used to compare responses to online hotel reviews at five different levels of hotel based on a star-rating system ranging from one star to five stars.

Most hotel managers’ response rates were low, and they paid the most attention to positive comments. Managers at four- and five-star hotels more often responded to negative online reviews. Guest service manager was the most common job title of managers who responded to guests’ reviews.

This paper is limited to an analysis of ten hotels, two for each of the five-star ratings. More hotel cases with long-term data collection involving the use of the star-rating system may provide more insights on this discussion.

The exploratory study sought to identify strategies for managing online reviews in the lodging industry. Hotel managers should respond to negative online reviews with appreciation, apology and an explanation of what went wrong. Moreover, hotels may need a designated person to observe and respond to guest comments on their Web sites and third-party Web sites. A designated person is also needed to monitor online comments and communicate with guests to better manage the hotel’s online reputation.

As an exploratory research project, this paper expands the understanding of hotel managers’ responses to their guests’ online reviews in an attempt to identify best practices for the industry.

This article offers support and guidance for students undertaking a literature review as part of their dissertation during an undergraduate or Masters course. A literature review is a summary of a subject field that supports the identification of specific research questions. A literature review needs to draw on and evaluate a range of different types of sources including academic and professional journal articles, books, and web‐based resources. The literature search helps in the identification and location of relevant documents and other sources. Search engines can be used to search web resources and bibliographic databases. Conceptual frameworks can be a useful tool in developing an understanding of a subject area. Creating the literature review involves the stages of: scanning, making notes, structuring the literature review, writing the literature review, and building a bibliography.

This is the fifth annual update of the bibliography that was published as a supplement to the first issue of Online Review. It is also the second update of the concatenated bibliography that contained the original issue plus the first updates.