Price promotion is being widely employed in the global restaurant industry. This exploratory study uses online user-generated content (UGC) to investigate how price promotion affects diners’ perceptions. The study uses secondary data extracted from a Chinese third-party review website, Dianping.com. The data was separated into Restaurant Week’s price promotion group and non-price promotion group for comparison. Structured content analysis and further chi-square tests were used to analyze qualitative data, and a two-way MANOVA was applied to analyze quantitative data. Empirical evidence shows that food, service, and environment are the top three determinant attributes for full-service restaurants, and they are not influenced by price promotion. In addition, diners’ perceptions of non-price promotions are significantly higher than Restaurant Week’s price promotion. Restaurant category has a significant effect on diners’ environment perceptions, but not on other attributes. Findings of the study provide diners’ insight on Restaurant Week as well as recommendations to adjust promotional strategies based on restaurant categories and practical instructions for full-service restaurant operators to evaluate price promotions using online UGC
