Analyzing online reviews in hospitality: data-driven opportunities for predicting the sharing of negative emotional content

Hospitality is one of the sectors that are nowadays most heavily characterized by consumers’ tendency to share online reviews on dedicated digital platforms. While most past work has focused on understanding the effect of online reviews and ratings on consumers’ evaluation and purchase decisions, this research tackles the issue of what drives the sharing of certain types of online content. Specifically, we investigate the sharing of user-generated content characterized by negative emotional valence, and study the effect of two factors on the extent to which user-generated content contains negative emotions. One such factor is reviewer's expertise, while the other is hotel quality. Our analysis of 1200 TripAdvisor reviews on Italian hotels located in three major Italian cities confirm our hypothesis that expert reviewers might share reviews containing less intense negative emotional content compared to less expert reviewers especially when the hotel is of high quality. To support our hypothesis, we build on the research on psychological antecedents of word-of-mouth behaviour suggesting that expert consumers are particularly reluctant to share negative word-of-mouth to avoid projecting a negative image of themselves in social contexts, thus possibly damaging their reputation.     

Factors influencing customer engagement with branded content in the social network sites of integrated resorts

The integrated resorts rely on social network sites (SNSs) for content marketing, while one of the main purposes of content marketing is customer engagement that will leverage the impact of branded content. This study investigates the factors influencing customer engagement with brand posts of integrated resorts on the SNSs. The findings highlight the important influence of both media-type and content-type factors on the level of customer engagement in SNSs of integrated resorts. This study provides practical implications for integrated resorts to develop SNS online content marketing strategy.     

Shopping value,tourist satisfaction and positive word of mouth: the mediating role of souvenir shopping satisfaction

We propose new insights into key satisfaction outcomes for souvenir retailers, such as positive word-of-mouth recommendations, seeking deeper comprehension of overall tourist satisfaction determinants, by analysing the mediating role of tourist souvenir shopping satisfaction. We apply variance-based structural equation modelling by means of partial least squares to a sample of 408 tourists all of whom had purchased souvenirs. The results suggest that tourist shopping satisfaction partially mediates the relation between shopping value and positive word of mouth, while tourist shopping satisfaction completely mediates the relation between shopping value and overall tourist satisfaction. The results and their implications are then discussed to arrive at pertinent conclusions on tourist souvenir shopping satisfaction.     

基于非线性效应的第三方支付平台兼容性研究

本文在设定网络外部性效用为符合梅特卡夫法则的非线性函数条件下,构建双寡头支付平台兼容和不兼容两种情况下的优化模型,探讨双寡头支付平台的兼容性策略选择问题。研究发现,规模对称的双寡头支付平台兼容之后,两家支付平台的利润、消费者效用及社会福利均会增加;银联成立后中国工商银行的银行卡业务利润得以提升也验证了模型结果。建议政府借鉴银联的成功经验,使银联在线成为各支付平台的聚合型平台,提高第三方支付清算系统的效率。     

旅游网络论坛的学术界定、发展现状与影响

网络论坛在中国发展迅速,逐渐成为继传统线下旅行社、线上旅行社之后,旅游中介商的第三支重要力量。在综合分析现有市场调查和研究的基础上,首先指出旅游网络论坛是虚拟消费社区的一种类型,发展出自助旅游文化,其次作为旅游电子中介商,它的目标市场是学历高和互联网使用率高的年轻人,核心产品以背包客、非标准化团队旅行、观光和特种旅游产品为主。梳理了旅游网络论坛的国内发展状况,最后论述其对于旅行社行业和目的地可能产生的重大影响。     

基于用户关注的房地产特征价格模型构建研究——以合肥市为例

特征价格模型是房地产研究中常用的经典模型,其特征指标往往基于研究者过往经验及偏好来选取,对购房者情感偏好考虑不足。基于房地产网络平台上丰富的在线用户评论,挖掘其所隐含的购房者情感偏好,建立体现用户关注的房地产特征价格模型,并以合肥市为例,采集148组楼盘数据进行实证研究。结果表明,“区位”“户型”“装修”“生活配套”“物业质量”“绿化环境”“交通”“学区”为购房者显著偏好的房地产特征指标,而依据这些特征指标构建的房地产特征价格模型能够合理地评估房地产特征属性的隐含价格,具有良好的拟合度和较高的解释能力。     

E-loyalty driven by website quality: The case of destination marketing organization websites

The capability of website quality management to drive tourism customer e-loyalty is the key factor to achieve superior performance of destination marketing organization (DMO) website operations. The quality management approaches that revolve around website design quality and online relationship quality have drawn intensive attention from e-loyalty researchers in recent years. Thorough empirical investigation, however, still lacks in incorporating the integrative impact generated by the two approaches into DMO website quality management. The current study introduces and validates a theoretical framework based on such impact. As the research result reveals, six facets predict tourism customer e-loyalty directly: informational usefulness, navigational effectiveness, aesthetic appeal, entertainment, social presence, and self-concept congruity embedded in the functional, emotional, and symbolic dimensions of website design quality. Online relationship quality, comprised of relationship satisfaction and relationship trust, plays a partial mediator role in amplifying the e-loyalty driving effect of website design quality in the DMO website context.     

Does Social Media Matter? Investigating the Effect of Social Media Features on Consumer Attitudes

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of social media's features (i.e., entertainment, usefulness, informativeness and irritation) toward consumers’ attitude toward the brand. Subsequently, this study explores the impact of this attitude toward consumers’ brand loyalty, brand awareness and purchase intention. Data for this study was collected through a large public university in Australia. Paper surveys were distributed to students, their friends and members of their immediate families (N = 724). The findings show that entertainment feature has the strongest impact on consumers’ attitude toward the brand's social media use, followed by informativeness, usefulness and finally, irritation. Consumers’ attitude toward a brand's social media strongly influences consumer loyalty, awareness and purchase intention. The findings of this research provide some insights into the impact of different features of social media which will be useful for practitioners and academics interested in social media.     

Trends and Future Directions in Online Marketing Research

Over the last decade, the increased adoption of the Internet in public life as well as in developing businesses has led to a phenomenal rise in academic research on online marketing. This article is set to extensively review scholarly articles appearing from 2000 to 2014 on the topic from 10 top-tier academic journals to understand the research trends in the domain. A literature review has reported eight major subjective categories with an analysis of online marketing effectiveness framework. This review found three most significant subject categories: (1) online marketing issues; (2) Internet usage, perception, and attitude; and (3) online shopping and e-commerce. Additionally, some new online marketing research topics such as word-of-mouth, user-generated content, and social network are also highlighted. Finally, a selection of research topics that got the maximum attention of researchers is presented along with discussion of the future research directions in the online marketing space.     

Role of Shopping Values and Web Atmospherics in E-Satisfaction and Repurchase Intention

Expected to touch US$55 billion in 2016, the e-commerce market in India presents an unprecedented growth opportunity for retailers. Existing studies have identified factors influencing shoppers’ online behaviour pertaining to the developed economies. Hence, it becomes pertinent to validate these antecedents for the economies like India. The article addresses this gap by examining the role of shopping values and web atmospherics, on e-satisfaction of Indian shoppers. Using multiple regression analysis, it also examines the influence of e-satisfaction on repurchase intention. The findings suggest that effectiveness of information content has the most significant impact on e-satisfaction. Web entertainment, utilitarian values and web informativeness are the other influencing factors. Contrary to the earlier studies, this study didn’t find any influence of hedonic shopping values on shoppers’ satisfaction. Also, e-satisfaction was found to have a positive influence on repurchase intention of e-shoppers. The article suggests select strategies that can be adopted by e-retailers.