“Seeing through consumers’ eyes”: exploring online restaurant selection behaviors using eye-tracking technology

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Hospitality ManagementJunehee KwonWith the advancement of the Internet and information technology, consumers have access to a massive amount of information before purchase. In the hospitality industry, consumers frequently search online information to make decisions. However, there has been limited hospitality research exploring the actual information search behaviors in the online setting. The purpose of this research was to assess the actual information search behaviors of consumers when choosing restaurants through consumer review websites. To accomplish the purpose, three mixed-methods were used including eye-tracking experiments (Phase I), qualitative, retrospective think-aloud (RTA) interviews (Phase II), and a scenario-based survey (Phase III). In the eye-tracking experiments, 30 participants were recruited and instructed to conduct restaurant search tasks. Variables included fixation duration, fixation count, and visit count, indicating how long and how often consumers’ attention had been attracted to certain information areas. The eye-tracking data was also visualized through heat maps and gaze plots. Following eye-tracking experiments, RTA interviews were conducted to investigate the underlying thinking process of consumers. A playback of the recorded eye-tracking video was presented to each participant while participants verbalized their thinking process and reasoning of information search behaviors. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed through grounded-theory model to identify important information elements. To overcome the limited generalizability of the eye-tracking experiments and interviews, a scenario-based survey was created, and seven hypotheses were developed to evaluate impacts of online reviews, images, and advertisements on consumers’ interests and restaurant visit intentions based on the results of Phases I and II. Restaurant selection scenarios were provided to the participants to look through screenshots of webpages in order to mimic the online environment. The online survey company Amazon MTurk was used for data collection. A total of 406 usable survey responses were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, one-sample Chi-square tests, and visualized heat maps. Eye-tracking experiment results revealed that images, consumer reviews, and filter functions were the top information areas to which consumers paid considerable attention. Advertisements in Yelp also received much attention from participants, but during RTA interviews, advertisements were found to be less impactful for consumers’ decision-making than the number of reviews, images with food items, and consumer reviews. Five out of seven hypotheses in Phase III were supported, indicating that it was mostly consistent with findings of the eye-tracking experiments and interviews (Phase I and II). Specifically, consumers’ interests and intentions to visit restaurants were greater for restaurants with a higher number of reviews, food images, and without advertisements. Consumers also were more interested in extremely rated reviews and preferred evenly-distributed image groups. This study contributes to the existing hospitality literature related to consumer behavior with the utilization of the innovative, combined methods of eye-tracking technology, RTA interviews, and scenario-based survey. This approach allowed the researcher to obtain a holistic view of actual consumer behavior, thinking process accompanying the behavior as well as the verification with large sample. Consumer review websites and restaurateurs were provided with specific recommendations to enhance the online user experience and improve customer satisfaction, respectively

Asymmetric effects of online consumer reviews

Consumers tend to seek heuristic information cues to simplify the amount of information involved in tourist decisions. Accordingly, star ratings in online reviews are a critical heuristic element of the perceived evaluation of online consumer information. The objective of this article is to assess the effect of review ratings on usefulness and enjoyment. The empirical application is carried out on a sample of 5,090 reviews of 45 restaurants in London and New York. The results show that people perceive extreme ratings (positive or negative) as more useful and enjoyable than moderate ratings, giving rise to a U-shaped line, with asymmetric effects: the size of the effect of online reviews depends on whether they are positive or negative

The impact of user generated content restaurant websites

JEL Classification System: M310 Marketing and O330 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion ProcessesEngaging with users remain something confusing for some marketers. How to effectively taking advantage of content marketing and active networks should be a matter of any organization who is willing to make its business growing. User generated content (UGC), is now everywhere. Less and less consumers purchase goods and services without making a quick research online to make sure they will make their money’s worth. (Mitic, 2016) The increasing popularity of UGC brought me to investigate further in this area of online marketing. Although some practitioners already wrote about the concept of electronic word of mouth (eWOM), not much research has been carried out on decision making based on UGC in the restaurant industry, nor on the impact it engenders for restaurant businesses. Online trends such as UGC are interesting to study because they are changing the marketing landscape and now make the audience more and more reachable. In the restaurant industry especially, it is interesting to see how restaurant establishments integrate these tendencies in their business. The practice of using the Internet as an external source to reach information, is ostensibly not new. However, it has only been a few years that people are getting more and more involved in using reviews platforms when deciding where they want to go eating out. I thus realised that this relatively new consumer behaviour related to restaurant experience deserved to be investigated in. Conjointly, the purpose of this research will be to understand to what extent UGC restaurant websites can impact on both a consumer and a restaurant manager perspective.Conseguir interacção com os utilizadores continua confuso para alguns marketeers. Como efectivamente conseguir tirar partido do marketing de conteúdo e das redes é algo que qualquer negócio ou organização deveria ter em consideração, se pretende escalar e ganhar uma posição mais dominante no mercado onde estiver inserido. Conteúdo gerado por utilizadores (CGU) está agora por todo o lado. Cada vez menos consumidores compram bens ou serviços sempre primeiro fazerem uma pesquisa rápida online para saberem se estão a fazer uma boa compra. (Mitic, 2016) A crescente popularidade do CGU levou-me a investigar mais detalhadamente esta área do marketing online. Embora alguns praticantes já tenham escrito sobre o conceito de eWOM (electronic word of mouth, em português, boca a boca electrónico), não foi feita muita pesquisa sobre a influência dos CGU no processo de decisão (em particular na área da restauração), ou sobre o impacto que tem no negócio em si. Tendências online como os CGU são interessantes de estudar porque estão a mudar o actual panorama do marketing, tornando a audiência muito mais próxima. Na indústria da restauração, especialmente, é interessante de ver como estabelecimentos integram essas novas tendências nos seus actuais modelos de negócio. A prática de usar a Internet como uma fonte externa de informação, é tudo menos nova. No entanto, há alguns anos para cá que a população começou a ficar muito mais envolvida no uso de plataformas de reviews na altura de decidirem onde jantar fora. Apercebi-me então, que esta têndencia no comportamento do consumidor merecia ser melhor investigada. Assim sendo, o propósito desta investigação é perceber de que forma os CGU em websites de restaurantes impactam tanto o consumidor como a gestão do negócio

FAKE REVIEWS AND MANIPULATION: DO CUSTOMER REVIEWS MATTER?

With the prevalence of fake reviews across web and e-commerce platforms it has become difficult for the customers to make an informed purchase decision. Considering this we examine the influence of review manipulation on customer’s purchase decision. A qualitative approach employing interviews with frequent online shoppers was employed to explore the phenomenon. The results of the study suggest that customers accord recommendations from their social network more weightage than the reviews available on an e-commerce platform. Further, we found that customers apply either or both interactive and extractive strategies to deal with review manipulation. Keywords: information processing, review manipulation, fake reviews, grounded theory

The role of consumer-brand engagement in a digital marketing era

The purpose of this thesis is to understand the role of consumer-brand engagement in a digital marketing era. We explore the consumer-brand engagement construct in relation to consumers as the engagement subjects, and brands (i.e., brand/companies) as the engagement objects. Our intention is to contribute to advancing the theoretical knowledge of this subject and to provide useful insights that can be used by practitioners, particularly companies that use interactive platforms to create consumer-brand relationships.O objetivo desta tese é o de compreender o papel do compromisso entre o consumidor e a marca nesta nova era de marketing digital. Exploramos nesse sentido o constructo do compromisso entre o consumidor e a marca, sendo o consumidor o sujeito do compromisso e a marca (isto é, marcas ou empresas) o objeto desse compromisso. É nosso objetivo contribuir para o avanço teórico do conhecimento sobre esta área do saber, bem como fornecer novos conhecimentos que possam ser úteis e utilizados pelos gestores nas empresas, nomeadamente no que diz respeito a empresas que utilizem plataformas interativas para criar relacionamentos entre os consumidores e as marcas

Strengths, Opportunities and areas of Improvements for Maroof Platform in Saudi Arabia

Maroof is a new third-party platform that is managed by the Saudi Ministry of Commerce. Maroof is designed to evaluate, regulate, and organize stores and E-commerce practices in Saudi Arabia. This paper will examine the platforms\u27 strengths, opportunities, and recommendations for improvements. Maroof was designed to help buyers make purchase decisions and issue certificates to registered stores. A major strength of the platform is that sellers are encouraged to sign up with their social security number, which makes them known\u27\u27 to the Saudi Ministry of Commerce. Additionally, it legitimizes the store owners\u27 credentials. Therefore, Saudi citizens can feel more confident when purchasing goods from social media accounts that are registered with Maroof. Utilizing Maroof is one of the factors that increase trust in buying in Saudi Arabia, especially in E-commerce. The purpose of Maroof is to prevent any fraudulent activities as the platform allows buyers to report a claim easily. On the other hand, the Maroof is a new platform with a major shortcoming, and thus there are several opportunities to improve Maroof\u27s usability. The major area that could use improvement is the comments section. For instance, a registered sign in username and password is not required to post a review. The platform simply allows users to anonymously write product reviews and comments along with ratings of sellers or stores using their social media accounts. This paper\u27s aim is to review these comments on the Maroof platform, which is a supposed, reliable, and trusted governmental website. Although the Maroof team claims they are continuously working on detecting fake reviews, and the Ministry of Commerce states that Maroof provides authenticated reviews, findings of this paper show that there are many fake positive reviews on Maroof. As a result, the Saudi Ministry of Commerce should make it clear that ratings do not always represent the quality of a product, even on a governmental website

WOM Or eWOM, Is There A Difference?: An Extension of the Social Communication Theory to Consumer Purchase Related Attitudes

While traditional word of mouth (WOM) and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) have both been shown to highly impact consumer behavior, there is a deficit in our knowledge of how they compare to one another. My dissertation research addresses the lack of empirical studies that compare WOM promotion in the form of face-to-face interaction to eWOM promotion in the form of computer-mediated communication, especially using Web 2.0 technologies. This research tests the assumption that WOM is superior to eWOM and, if so, how to extend eWOM to improve its performance against WOM. Essay One introduces a proposed conceptual framework to differentiate WOM and eWOM based on Social Communication Theory. The overall conceptual model was derived from a qualitative research study that was used to explore and define the concepts, media types, and application of WOM and eWOM using a diverse panel of consumers. Essay Two describes an experiment that was conducted to empirically test whether WOM impacts important marketing outcomes differently than eWOM using an ecologically valid research procedure. Essay Two further explores mediation using social communication elements as the underlying explanatory mechanism for the relative impact of WOM and eWOM on consumers’ attitude toward a message, attitude toward a product, and purchase intention. The results revealed that WOM has a significantly higher impact than eWOM on consumer purchase-related attitudes. The posited social communication framework did mediate or explain the relative difference between WOM and eWOM on the outcomes variables. Essay Three investigates the robustness of the findings through a set of replication studies that test the effects across small and large sample sizes and across different methods of analysis. The results indicated that WOM showed a significant and consistently higher impact than eWOM across both replication studies. The third essay also examines factors that were influential in closing the relative gap between WOM and eWOM by introducing a third concept based on the Hyperpersonal Model of Communication Theory. This research is important as it seeks to understand how consumers communicate in this digital age and why there is an evolution of the sharing of product information that leads to key managerial, theoretical, and methodological implications

리뷰 작성 환경과 소비자들의 리뷰 작성 경향

학위논문(석사)--서울대학교 대학원 :경영대학 경영학과,2019. 8. 송인성.Do previous rating environments affect consumers propensity to engage in subsequent ratings? Whereas prior research has addressed the relationship between post purchase evaluation and the incidence decision of expressing opinions, little work has examined the underpinnings of the link between posted reviews and subsequent incidence decisions. Using a large dataset of restaurant reviews collected from Yelp.com, I investigate social dynamics in the opinion expression. The objective of this research is to examine the systematic link between prior and posterior reviews and reveal the factors that are associated with the aggregate number of reviews in the subsequent period. The factors affecting the consumers incidence decisions have the potential to systematically alter the compositions of opinions in the review websites. This paper examines the self-selection in the consumers decision to contribute to the online conversation by empirically identifying systematic biases in review websites by studying restaurant reviews at the content level. I present the following findings of the relationship between previous rating environments and subsequent review generation: (1) more reviews are contributed toward the restaurants with more reviews in the previous period, (2) activists contribute more reviews toward the restaurants with the fewer cumulative number of reviews in the previous period, (3) more reviews are contributed toward the restaurants with higher Yelp rating in the previous period, and (4) more reviews are contributed toward the restaurants with a shorter average length of reviews in the previous period. Overall, these results show that online reviews are disproportionately written for the specific rating environments with a consistent pattern of reviewers responding to previously posted reviews.리뷰 작성 환경이 소비자들의 리뷰 작성 경향에 영향을 미칠까? 이전 연구에서 주로 구매 후 평가와 리뷰 작성 경향에 대해 주로 다룬 반면, 작성된 리뷰들과 이후 리뷰 작성 경향에 대한 연구는 많이 이루어지지 않았다. 이 연구에서는 Yelp.com에서 수집한 대용량 리뷰 데이터를 활용하여 의견 표현 단계에서의 Social Dynamics에 대하여 연구한다. 즉, 이전 리뷰와 이후 리뷰들의 체계적인 연결 관계를 분석함으로써 리뷰 작성 경향에 영향을 미치는 사회적인 요소들을 찾아내고자 한다. 이와 같은 요소들은 리뷰 작성 경향에 영향을 미치는 것에서 더 나아가 리뷰 웹사이트 내 리뷰들의 구성 자체를 체계적으로 변경시킬 수 있다. 이 논문은 레스토랑 리뷰 데이터를 분석하여 리뷰 웹사이트 상에 작성된 총 리뷰 수의 체계적인 편향을 경험적으로 확인함으로써 소비자들이 온라인 리뷰 웹사이트 상에 기여할지 여부, 즉 의견 표출 여부를 결정하는 과정에서 발생하는 Self-selection에 대해 검토한다. 연구를 통해 리뷰 작성 환경과 리뷰 작성 경향에 대한 다음의 결과를 보였다. (1) 전체 소비자들은 이전 시점에 작성된 리뷰가 많은 레스토랑에 더 많은 리뷰를 작성한다. (2) 활동적인 소비자들은 누적 리뷰 수가 적은 레스토랑에 더 많은 리뷰를 작성한다. (3) 전체 소비자들은 누적 Yelp 평점이 높은 레스토랑에 더 많은 리뷰를 작성한다. (4) 전체 소비자들은 리뷰의 누적 평균 길이가 짧은 레스토랑에 더 많은 리뷰를 작성한다. 이러한 결과는 특정한 리뷰 작성 환경 상에서 온라인 리뷰가 더 많이 작성되며 소비자들이 기존에 작성된 리뷰에 일관적으로 반응하는 것을 나타낸다.1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 5 2.1. Social dynamics in the opinion formation phase 7 2.2. Social dynamics in the opinion expression phase 8 3. DATA 12 4. HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT 15 4.1. The Effect of Review Volume on Incidence Decisions 16 4.2. The Effect of Review Valence on Incidence Decisions 21 4.3. The Effect of Review Variance on Incidence Decisions 23 4.4. The Effect of Review Length on Incidence Decisions 24 5. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS AND RESULT 25 6. CONCLUSION 34 REFERENCES 38 APPENDIX 41 국문초록 43Maste

Online Apparel Consumer Behavior: Hedonic Motivation & Post-Purchase Communication

This paper serves as a review of existing literature for the purpose of identifying potential future areas of research as it relates to the industry of e-Commerce in the apparel field. Within this paper, I use research in the subject of online consumer behavior to draw similarities and differences with research in the subject of online apparel consumer behavior. The intent is to highlight a distinction between the categories of a more generalized online consumer and an online apparel consumer, with particular attention on consumer-type responses to, and interaction with, hedonic atmosphere attributes as well as electronic word of mouth

Do reviews from friends and the crowd affect online consumer posting behaviour differently?

User-generated reviews are valuable resources for consumers to gain information of products which has significant impact on their following decision-making. With the development of social network service, consumers are exposed to reviews coming from both friends and the crowds (non-friends). However, the impact of friends’ and crowds’ reviews on consumer posting behaviour has not been well differentiated. Using the online review information as well as the underlying social network from Yelp, this paper develops a multilevel mixed effect probit model to study the impact of consumer characteristics and reviews of different sources, i.e. friends or crowds, on the possibility of consumer further engaging in posting behaviour. Despite the common perception that the volume, valance and variance of reviews significantly impact the possibility of following posting behaviour, we show that such influence majorly comes from the friend reviews. The volume of friend reviews has much stronger impact on the target user’s posting behaviour than that of the crowds. The valance and variance of the crowd reviews show no significant influence when ignoring the friend reviews, but negative influence when considering it. The friend reviews and crowd reviews are further divided as positive and negative ones, and only the positive friend reviews and negative crowd review are found significantly enhancing the posting possibility