The influence of e-word-of-mouth on hotel occupancy rate

Purpose Online consumer reviews have become increasingly important for consumer decision-making. One of the most prominent examples is the hotel industry where consumer reviews on websites, such as Bookings.com, TripAdvisor and Venere.com, play a critical role in consumers’ choice of a hotel. There have been a number of recent studies analyzing various aspects of online reviews. The purpose of this paper is to investigate their effects in terms of hotel occupancy rates. Design/methodology/approach This paper measures through regression analysis the impact of three dimensions of consumer reviews (i.e. review score, review variance and review volume) on the occupancy rates of 346 hotels located in Rome, isolating a number of other factors that might also affect demand. Findings Review score is the dimension with the highest impact. The results suggest that after controlling for other variables, a one-point increase in the review score is associated to an increase in the occupancy rate by 7.5 percentage points. Regardless the review score, the number of reviews has a positive effect, but with decreasing returns, implying that the higher the number of reviews, the lower the beneficial effect in terms of occupancy rates is. Practical implications The findings quantify the strong association of online reviews to occupancy rates suggesting the use of appropriate reputational management systems to increase hotel occupancy and therefore performance. Originality/value A major contribution of this paper is its comprehensiveness in analyzing the relation between online consumer reviews and occupancy across a heterogeneous sample of hotel

Organizational Online Participation

As today’s employees demand higher degrees of involvement in terms of how, when, and where they work, open innovation and (internal) crowdsourcing are being widely adopted. Despite recent efforts by many organizations to implement such systems in order to increase the possibilities for organizational participation, studies have only narrowly explored how their design affects employee opinions and communication as well as how organizational culture influences usage and adoption. This thesis investigates the conditions, capabilities and components for the design of organizational online participation systems, applying a Design Science Research approach. Following a literature review on idea generation, collaboration and evaluation in open innovation processes, we outline success factors for open innovation systems. We validate our success factors in practice by conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 experts from mid- and large-cap private and public organizations in Germany. Moreover, we derive three key challenges that guide our subsequent studies. First, we investigate the “Bag of Lemons” approach, a novel rating technique, and compare it to the standard techniques Likert scales and up- and down-voting. Our study with 141 participants in an open innovation engagement at a public-private research organization finds that BOL is perceived as more frustrating than the other two rating techniques, which is partly mediated by the significantly increased information overload. Second, we turn to anonymity in two distinct studies. We analyze the effect of anonymity, as compared to identifiability of user profiles, on communication persuasiveness – operationalized as actual opinion change – in a two-staged online experimental survey with 377 participants. We find anonymity to be a double-edged sword as it decreases perceived social presence, which in turn affects both user involvement as well as perceived user credibility. Thereafter, we investigate the design of a feature for optional anonymous contributions and its effect on participation and the choice of language in an internal crowdsourcing platform. Our analysis of an implementation and five-month test at a public organization with more than 110 employees shows the effectiveness of our “opt-in anonymity” feature as we elicit participation from otherwise reticent employees and no disinhibited language. Third, we analyze the design of an internal crowdsourcing system at this public organization in more detail, focusing on the influence of its organizational culture on usage and acceptance. We assert an IT-culture-conflict, as the organizational values do not match the open and communal approach transposed by the crowdsourcing system. We suggest that organizational online participation is a promising tool to enhance employee involvement, driving innovations and enabling organizational transformation

The impact of online reviews on consumer evaluations and decision making: an analysis of review volume and user-generated photos

This thesis investigates the impact of online social influence on consumer behaviour, specifically within the context of online reviews. It examines how review volume and user-generated photos affect consumer evaluations and decision-making. In Chapter 2, I introduce a novel phenomenon, the N-effect, which explores how opinion volume influences the content of online evaluations. I find that as the number of opinions increases, the content becomes more emotional and less analytical. In Chapter 3, I investigate the role of user-generated photos in shaping purchase intentions. This research demonstrates that photos can enhance review helpfulness, even when they lack diagnostic information. This effect is driven by the confidence signalled by the reviewer when posting a review with a photo, which is later assimilated by readers, leading to increased perceived helpfulness and purchase likelihood. This thesis makes several theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on human interaction with technology. Theoretically, it expands our understanding of online social influence by examining the dynamics of online opinion expression and content. I contribute to the literature on group size by demonstrating how responsibility may be lost in online contexts. Furthermore, the findings provide insights into the social influence of photos on viewers and the role of pseudo-evidence in shaping beliefs and attitudes. From a practical standpoint, this research offers valuable insights for online platform managers and marketers on interpreting and using consumer-written reviews. Overall, this thesis contributes to the existing literature on online social influence and provides insights for businesses to improve communication and interpretation with consumers by better understanding and leveraging online reviews and opinions.Open Acces

What Doctors Wish They Knew: Treatment Compliance in an Online Health Community for Chronic Patients

Treatment compliance for patients with chronic health problems is important for the management of their illness due to the long-term nature of their conditions. In this study, we examine how evaluations of different types of treatments provided by members of an online health community are associated with treatment evaluations and compliance. We use self-reported data on evaluation and compliance of over 270 different treatments from over 20,000 patients in a prominent online health community. We find that other community members’ treatment evaluation valence is positively associated with patient treatment evaluation and treatment compliance. Similarly, other community members’ treatment compliance is positively associated with patient treatment compliance. We also find these relations are moderated by community size and ratings variance. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results for the online health communities’ literature, as well as the practical implications for patients, healthcare providers, and policy makers

Journal of Communication Pedagogy, Complete Volume 4, 2021

This is the complete volume 4 of the Journal of Communication Pedagogy

The effect of electronic word of mouth communications on intention to buy: A meta-analysis

YesThe aim of this research is to synthesise findings from previous studies by employing weight and meta-analysis to reconcile conflicting evidence and draw a “big picture” of eWOM factors influencing consumers’ intention to buy. By using the findings from 69 studies, this research identified best (e.g. argument quality, valence, eWOM usefulness, trust in message), promising (e.g. eWOM credibility, emotional trust, attitude towards website) and least effective (e.g. volume, existing eWOM, source credibility) predictors of intention to buy in eWOM research. Additionally, the effect size of each predictor was calculated by performing meta-analysis. For academics, understanding what influences consumers’ intention to buy will help set the agenda for future research directions; for practitioners, it will provide benefit in terms of practical guidance based on detailed analysis of specific factors influencing consumers’ intention to buy, which could enhance their marketing activities

How TripAdvisor’s reviewers level of expertise influence their online rating behaviour and the usefulness of reviews

The internet has improved the buying behaviour of customers. The development of technologies has led to the dissemination of opinions on social networks where customers buy goods and services. These comments on social networks started to be a part of the purchasing process. Until a few years ago, customers used to choose their itineraries based on tourist guides or brochures. Nowadays, customers’ reviews have changed the way a destination is portrayed, enhancing the description of a product or a service to a level that not even the supplier was able to reach before. There are different types of reviewers. The aim of this study is to identify both reviews, experts and non-expert reviewers and analyse the way they write their reviews. Reviews of five hotels taken from the TripAdvisor website were used in order to conduct this study. After analyzing a great set of variables, the results show that there is not much different on the amount of positive/negative reviews written by a reviewer, however, there is a difference in the deeper meaning of a review when it is positive than when it is negative. The expert reviewer tends to be more emotional when writing positive reviews than negative reviews. Regarding the usefulness of the reviews, there is no significant difference in usefulness of a review whether is an written by an expert reviewer or by a non-expert reviewer. The results also indicate that being an expert does not influence the rating a reviewer gives to a hotel stay either. The study was conducted by using Lexalytics program to analyze a Natural Language Processing (NLP) used to classify reviews according to their polarity. With this study, a new research in study was filled. This study gives insights on the polarity of a review depending on the type of reviewer. The results of this study are also important for hotel managers in order for them to understand the type of guest in house.O desenvolvimento da tecnologia, com ênfase na internet e nos seus desenvolvimentos ao longo dos anos, melhorou o comportamento dos clientes e levou à disseminação de opiniões em redes sociais onde os clientes compram productos e serviços. Os comentários feitos a um produto ou serviço nas redes sociais começaram a fazer parte do processo da compra. Até há uns anos atrás, os clientes escolhiam os itinerários para as suas viagens com base em guias turísticos e brochuras. Recentemente, os comentários de clientes mudaram a maneira que um destino é explicado e ilustrado, melhorando, desta forma, a descrição de um produto/serviço a um nível que nem mesmo os fornecedores destes tinham alcançado ainda. Há diferentes tipos de reviewers. O objectivo deste estudo é identificar ambos tipos, expert e non-expert e analisar o estilo de reviews escrita por estes. Experts são assim denominados se tiverem escrito mais de dez reviews; por outro lado os non-expert reviewers são assim denominados se tiverem escrito menos de 10 reviews. Para este estudo, foi utilizada informação de cinco hotéis de Orlando, Florida, retirada do TripAdvisor. Depois de uma análise das variáveis, os resultados mostram que não há grande diferença no que toca ao volume de comentários positivos/negativos escritos por um utilizador. Por outro lado, existe uma diferença na emoção dada a cada comentário, entre os utilizadores. O expert reviewer tende a ser mais emocional quando escreve comentários positivos do que quando escreve comentários negativos. Relativamente a utilidade de cada comentário, não há grande diferença no que toca a ser um expert reviewer ou um non-expert a escrever um comentário. Os resultados indicam, também, que ser um expert não tem qualquer influência na avaliação que um utilizador dá a sua estadia num hotel. Este estudo foi feito com base no programa Lexalytics, com objectivo de analisar a Natural Language Processing (NLP) usada para classificar os comentários de acordo com a sua polaridade