Search results

Consumer-perceived review attitude determines consumer overall information adoption and is a core part of consumer’s online-shopping. This study aims to focus on factors that could influence consumer review attitude and can be used by marketers to shape individual information perception.

The study used the questionnaire method to collect data from online shoppers and the modelling of structural equations as an empirical approach to analyse the data.

The findings demonstrate that both systematic and heuristic cues impact the reviewer’s credibility and perceived website attitude differently, which, in turn, influence review attitude. Review characteristics, such as factuality, consistency and relevancy, have a positive relationship with reviewer credibility, while only review consistency and relevancy appears to have a relationship with review attitude. Website characteristics such as reputation, familiarity and social interactivity positively influence the website attitude, which positively influences review attitude. Apart from this, review skepticism has a significant negative relationship with review attitude.

This study could help to foster a positive attitude towards online reviews. Digital marketers need to motivate trusted reviewers to post consistent, fact-based reviews. Further improving the overall website reputation and interactivity could bring a positive attitude towards the reviews. Also, digital marketers must filter and avoid contradictory reviews or reviews that have a bipolar message and reviews expressing numerous emotions to enhance review relevance and consistency.

The current study addresses the need to understand the formation of consumer review attitude through both review and website characteristics using heuristic – systematic model. The paper captures the complex process undergone by the consumer to decipher review attitude and thereby extend the understanding of consumer information processing.

This study aims to integrate reviewers’ and readers’ discrepant perspectives on extremely negative reviews. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between negative emotion intensity levels and reviews helpfulness on two platforms: integrated websites and social networking sites (SNS) to emphasize the role of platform types on customers’ purchase decisions.

This research adopts a mixed-method approach of business intelligence approach and quasi-experimental design. Study 1 performed text mining and Welch’s t-test to compare reviewers’ negative emotion intensity levels on two platforms. Study 2 adopted a 2*2 factorial quasi-experimental design to examine how intense negative emotions impact the perceived reviews helpfulness on two platforms. A 3*2 factorial design in Study 3 also tested social tie strength’s moderating effect between the intensity of negative emotions and review helpfulness.

The current study reveals that integrated website reviewers tend to express more extreme negative emotions than SNS reviewers. SNS and integrated website readers deem reviews that embed severe negative emotions as less helpful. The moderating role of social tie strength between extremely negative emotions on review helpfulness was insignificant in the study.

This study enriches the online review literature by comparing writers’ and readers’ perspectives on online reviews with extremely negative emotions across two online platform types: integrated websites and SNS. From the writers’ perspective, this study highlights anonymity and the presence of an audience as essential factors that reviewers consider in selecting an online review platform to express themselves. This research also sheds light on how readers’ perspectives on extremely negative reviews conflict with the presumptions of writers of extremely negative reviews on integrated websites by demonstrating that content embedding extremely negative emotions is less helpful regardless of platform type.

This research provides online negative review management strategies to platform and hotel managers. The findings suggest hotel and review platform managers should consider adopting review alignment or monitoring systems based on negative emotions intensity levels since readers on both platforms perceive reviews embedding extremely negative emotions as less helpful. Additionally, hotel managers can progress promotions to guests who share online reviews on SNS since SNS reviewers are more likely to attenuate their extremely negative emotions when writing reviews.

This research innovatively provides a comprehensive overview of negative reviews’ production and consumption process from reviewers’ and readers’ perspectives. This research also provides practitioners insight into the nature of two different platform types and the management of negative reviews on these platforms.

The field of website quality evaluation attracts the interest of a range of disciplines, each bringing its own particular perspective to bear. This study aims to identify the main characteristics – methods, techniques and tools – of the instruments of evaluation described in this literature, with a specific concern for the factors analysed, and based on these, a multipurpose model is proposed for the development of new comprehensive instruments.

Following a systematic bibliographic review, 305 publications on website quality are examined, the field's leading authors, their disciplines of origin and the sectors to which the websites being assessed belong are identified, and the methods they employ characterised.

Evaluations of website quality tend to be conducted with one of three primary focuses: strategic, functional or experiential. The technique of expert analysis predominates over user studies and most of the instruments examined classify the characteristics to be evaluated – for example, usability and content – into factors that operate at different levels, albeit that there is little agreement on the names used in referring to them.

Based on the factors detected in the 50 most cited works, a model is developed that classifies these factors into 13 dimensions and more than 120 general parameters. The resulting model provides a comprehensive evaluation framework and constitutes an initial step towards a shared conceptualization of the discipline of website quality.

The authors hope to filter valuable information from online reviews, obtain objective and accurate information about the demands of auto consumers and help auto companies develop more reasonable production and marketing strategies for healthy and sustainable development. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objectives.

The authors collected review data from online automotive forums and generated a corpus after pre-processing. Then, the authors extracted consumer demands and topics using the LDA model. Finally, the authors used a trained Word2vec tool to extend the consumer demand topics.

Different types of vehicle consumers have the same demands, such as “Space,” “Power Performance,” and “Brand Comparison,” and distinct demands, such as “Appearance,” “Safety,” “Service,” and “New Energy Features”; consumers who buy new energy vehicles are still accustomed to comparing with the brands or models of fuel vehicles; new energy vehicles consumers pay more attention to services and service quality during the purchasing and using process.

The development time of new energy vehicles is relatively short, with some models being available for only one year or even six months. The smaller amount of available data may impact the applicability of topic models. The sample size, especially for new energy vehicles, needs to be increased to improve the general applicability of topic models further.

First, this measure helps online review websites improve their existing review publication mechanisms, enhance the overall quality of online review content, increase user traffic and promote the healthy development of online review websites. Second, this allows for timely adjustments in future product production and sales plans and further enhances automotive companies' ability to leverage online reviews for Internet marketing.

The authors have improved the accuracy and stability of the fused topic model, providing a scientific and efficient research tool for multi-dimensional topic mining of online reviews. With the help of research results, consumers can more easily understand the discussion topics and thus filter out valuable reference information. As a result, automotive companies may gain information about consumer demands and product quality feedback and thus quickly adjust production and marketing strategies to increase sales and market share.

This research aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable hospitality and tourism by applying social network analysis to identify sustainable tourism business networks and untangle the role of cognitive and geographical proximity in their formation.

Data mining and machine learning techniques were applied to data collected from the websites of tourism companies located in northeastern Italy, namely, the Veneto region. Specifically, the authors used Web scraping to extract relevant information from the internet.

The results support the existence of geographical clusters of tourist accommodation providers that are linked by strong cognitive proximity based on sustainability principles that are well communicated via their websites. This does not appear to be greenwashing because companies that have agreed on sustainability principles have also implemented concrete actions and tend to signal these actions through a variety of sustainability certifications.

The results may guide tourism managers and policymakers in developing tourism initiatives directed at the creation of fruitful collaborations between similarly oriented organizations and methods to support clusters of sustainable tourism accommodation. Identifying sustainable tourism networks may assist in the identification of potential actors of change, fueling a widespread transition toward sustainability.

In this study, the authors adopted an innovative methodology to detect sustainability-oriented tourism business networks. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to simultaneously explore the cognitive and geographical connections between tourism businesses.

Falsified online reviews (FORs) are the published/viewable consumer-generated online content regarding a firm (or its representatives) or its services and goods that is, to some degree, untruthful or falsified. The purpose of this study is first to explore the nature of FORs, focusing on reviewers' interpretations and refections on falsity, intent, anonymity and the target of their FOR. Secondly, the authors examine the valence and veracity dimensions of FORs and introduce a typology to differentiate their variations.

using an exploratory research design, 48 interviews were conducted with participants who post online reviews on social media about their experiences with food and beverage serving outlets.

The results show four common forms of FORs on social media. These are reviews focused on equity equalizing, friendly flattery, opinionated opportunism and malicious profiteering.

The authors provide exploratory and in-depth information via interviews, but do not analyse the content of FORs.

Firms should be aware of varieties of FORs and that these may not be limited to malicious content. This is important in terms of showing that in dealing with FORs, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. FORs are not always entirely fabricated, and instead various levels of falseness are observed, ranging from slight alterations to complete fabrications.

Previous research explored how to identify and differentiate FORs from truthful ones, focusing on the reviews or how they are perceived by readers. However, comparatively little is known of the reviewers of FORs. Hence, this study focuses on reviewers and offers new insights into the nature of FORs by identifying and examining the main forms of FORs on social media.

The purpose of this paper is to unearth various dimensions of employee experience (EX) and explore how pandemic impacted various EX factors using online employee reviews. The authors identify employee-discussed EX-factors and quantify the associated sentiments and importance.

This paper employs Latent Dirichlet Allocation on the online employee reviews to identify the key EX-factors. The authors probe sentiments and importance associated with key EX-factors using sentiment analysis, importance analysis, regression analysis and dominance analysis.

The result of topic modeling identifies 20 EX-factors that shape overall EX. While skill development plays a major role in shaping overall EX, employees perceived Salary and Growth as the most important EX-factor and expressed negative sentiments during the pandemic. Employee sentiments significantly influence overall EX.

When employees have extensive change experience, managers should consider various facets of EX to manage the smooth change and deliver a better EX. This research offers key EX-factors to be considered by managers while dealing with employees. Online employee reviews websites are recommended to include the identified key EX-factors to comprehend the holistic EX.

This study contributes to the growing literature on the employee experience as a concept by identifying various EX-factors. The authors expand the extant EX scales by identifying an inclusive and updated set of EX-factors.

Despite promising conceptual developments in value co-creation behaviors, the scholarly attention afforded to the importance of the university website features in strengthening the university brand image and reputation through students’ value co-creation behaviors is limited. University website features are conceptualized as a hierarchical construct with three dimensions: usability, availability and information. This study aims to investigate the effect of university website features and value co-creation behaviors of students on promoting brand image and brand reputation at Islamic Azad University in Iran.

This study is quantitative. Using convenience sampling techniques, a responsive group of 384 students was chosen from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran in Iran. Survey methods were used for data collection. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the derived hypotheses.

The findings of this study indicated that website features have a positive effect on fostering value co-creation behaviors (participation and citizenship behavior), and participation behavior, in turn, improves university brand image and reputation. At the same time, among value co-creation behaviors, citizenship behavior has no impact on the university’s brand image. Finally, the brand image formed through website features and participation behavior positively affects brand reputation.

This study was conducted in the higher education (HE) sector in one cosmopolitan Iranian city (i.e. Tehran), to which Iranians from other cities travel for studying. Thus, the results of this survey include a variety of subcultures. In the future, a study that incorporates all major metropolitan cities of Iran may increase the generalizability of the findings. Unrelated to the purpose of this study, a future research study may extend the currently studied geographical dimensions and examine the antecedents of university brand reputation across different nations using a cross-cultural approach.

Pragmatically, the findings of this study urge university policymakers, information technology managers and marketers to consider the university website’s unique role in assisting co-creation behavior, which in turn promotes university brand image and reputation in the HE market. One of the ways to assess a university’s brand image and reputation is through the university ranking system. Ascending the ranking system can allow a university to attract qualified students.

These findings contribute to the marketing literature by empirically validating the three elements in the website features construct, providing intelligence on how website features can drive value co-creation behaviors, brand image and reputation. Also, results revealed that the brand image of universities positively affects brand reputation. This study highlights the importance of national and international rankings of universities and students’ sensitivity to such rankings. Undoubtedly, this is evident in Iranian students’ behavior in selecting their university.

The purpose of this study is to review and analyze the status of word-of-mouth (WOM) research in the business-to-business (B2B) context and discuss and identify new possible future directions.

A systematic review was conducted and 36 articles on B2B WOM were collected to evaluate the current state of the literature and clarify possible future research directions.

This thematic analysis categorize these articles into three themes: WOM generation, WOM usage and reference marketing. Under each theme, the authors reveal research findings unique to B2B research and different from business-to-consumer (B2C) WOM research. This study identifies several research questions that should be addressed by future research.

Both academic researchers and business practitioners recognize that WOM plays an essential role in B2B marketing. However, no review paper focuses on WOM in the B2B context. Findings in the B2C WOM literature suggest that WOM substantially influences firms’ performance, but that managers cannot simply attempt to extrapolate B2C findings to the B2B arena. By synthesizing and assessing prior research on WOM in the B2B context, this study contributes to a better understanding of the B2B WOM phenomenon and facilitates future research on this topic.

The purpose of this study is to investigate characteristics of apparel-related critical incidents that motivate both Generation Z and Y consumers to share electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) via specific online channels.

The current research used an exploratory mixed-methods approach.

Qualitative findings of critical incidents revealed that the main situations that led to the spread of eWOM involved new purchases (49%), product quality (21%), pricing and promotions (19%), complaints (9%) and brand content (48%). Participants were motivated to spread information about the critical incidents by a desire to connect with friends and family (83%), help others (37%), influence others (48%) and express brand loyalty (32%). Quantitative results indicated significant relationships between critical incidents, motivations and eWOM channel choice.

This study has theoretical implications for apparel researchers attempting to gain insight into critical incidents that motivate consumers to engage in eWOM on specific channels in a positive or negative manner.

These findings are important for marketers as it appears that brand content does an efficient job at driving engagement on SM; marketers need to increase efforts to engage with consumers via feedback on websites, as this is an opportunity to counteract negative experiences and retain consumers’ loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current research is the first to extend theories of communication and motivation to connect critical incidents with situational intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for spreading eWOM via online channels for Millennial and Generation Z consumers.