Managers have begun to respond to customers' online reviews of services on online review websites. However, it is not known how viewers evaluate company-initiated service recovery in the form of manager responses to online reviews. This research has three objectives: (1) to explore how managers are currently responding to electronic word of mouth; (2) to investigate whether a manager's response to electronic negative word of mouth (eNWOM) positively influences viewers' behavioral intentions; (3) to examine which elements in a manager's responses increases viewers' evaluations of trust and behavioral intentions towards the company. Three studies were conducted, one for each objective. Study "1 examined 21,211 online reviews and manager responses from Tripadvisor.com from 184 hotels in five cities. Study "2 was a single-factor between-subject experimental design by manipulating a manager's response to eNWOM (response message vs. no response message) through scenarios. Study "3 was a 2 (procedural justice: high vs. low) x 2 (interactional justice: high vs. low) x 2 (social presence: high vs. low) between-subject experimental design that manipulated manager's responses through scenarios. Findings from Study "1 revealed that managers were more likely to respond to eNWOM compared to neutral word of mouth. A content analysis of 432 company responses to eNWOM determined that managers used nine online review management strategies: appreciation, apology, future patronage encouragement, explanation, follow up, flexibility, correction, compensation, and social presence. Results from Study "2 indicated that viewers were more likely to visit a restaurant when a manager responded to eNWOM compared to no response to eNWOM. Results from Study "3 revealed a three-way interaction of procedural justice, interactional justice, and social presence on trust. There were also main effects of procedural justice and interactional justice on trust. Additionally, results provided partial support for the mediating role of trust in the relationship between the three-way interaction and behavioral intentions. This study contributes to the online service recovery literature and online trust formation literature by enhancing the understanding of how viewers evaluate manager responses to eNWOM and how social presence can be used with procedural justice and interactional justice to enhance trust in the online review management context. Service organizations should create a comprehensive online review system to respond to eNWOM and identify ways to enhance procedural justice, interactional justice, and social presence into their responses. Online review websites should encourage companies to provide managerial response to online complaints and allow for social presence and enhanced creative options in manager responses.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how trust was built from three dimensions of source credibility in an electronic word of mouth space towards purchase intentions of a hotel stay. The chosen dimensions of Source Credibility that were investigated in the study was: Homophily, Expertise and Trustworthiness. The study aimed to see how consumers of hotel booking for a destination got affected and believed in electronic word of mouth for their intention to purchase a hotel stay via the internet. A quantitative method was chosen for this study with a questionnaire that was sent out to students on the programmes “Ekonomie Kandidat”, “Civilekonom” and “Fastighetsmäklare” at Luleå University of Technology. The questionnaire was also shared on the author's private Facebook page and sent to friends and family via messenger. The data was collected during one week and summarized in diagrams and a one-sample statistical t-test for the three dimensions of Source Credibility were run and are provided in appendix 1-3. The findings for this study shows that all three dimensions; homophily, trustworthiness and expertise impact trust in eWOM and can lead to purchasing intentions of a hotel stay. The trust towards an expert who works at a hotel (manager) did not seem to be trustworthy compared to previous customers who shared their opinions of a hotel online. It appeared clearly that previous customer reviews which provide a lot of information, repetitive reviews of customers and new reviews are seen as the most trustworthy for purchasing a hotel stay online. A recommendation to managers in the hotel industry and to those working with the review websites is therefore to categorize reviews so customers easily can pick from what they are searching for.

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In the past decade, a fundamental research topic in the information systems (IS) discipline has been to examine the value of online platforms on businesses, society, and consumers, notably in the form of improved efficiency in information sharing, consumer engagement, and increased sales. However, the risks rooted in online platforms may cannibalize the value created, which have received limited attention in the literature and practice. In my dissertation, I attempt to fill this gap in the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the risks of online platforms from the angle of these three main entities in the ecosystem with three separate yet related essays. The first essay focuses on the risks for businesses that leverage social media platforms, and assesses how their posting on social media fan pages affects consumers’ decision to purchase and unfollow from the firms. The second essay focuses on the risks of fake news on social media and how social media platforms may use identity verification to reduce online anonymity and combat this increasingly critical social problem. The third essay focuses on estimating the risks of using monetary incentives to motivate consumers to write online product reviews, and examines how such strategy may affect product sales. Our studies have theoretical and practical implications for designing effective online platform information systems. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

Tourists' information processing is a dynamic process in that their information use depends on the surrounding context. From tourists' personal characteristics (e.g., age, gender, and travel experience), nature of tourism products (e.g., intangibility and variability), to the development of information technology (e.g., the prevalent usage of mobile devices for information search), a variety of contextual factors are involved when tourists process information for decision-making. Given the importance of online reviews in the hospitality and tourism field as information sources, this dissertation aims to understand the contextual effects of online reviews on tourists' decision-making. By selecting several contextual factors, three independent and interrelated essays examine how tourists' cognitive or behavioral responses to online reviews are affected by those factors. Considering that local search (e.g., looking for nearby restaurants by using "restaurants near me" as a search query) becomes an important context for using online reviews, both Study 1 and 2 focus on the local search context. Study 1 investigates the role of online reviews in the local search context; specifically, how online reviews are used as ranking factors by local search platforms (LSPs), is examined with an analytical approach. Study 2 investigates tourists' processing of online reviews in the local search context; specifically, how online reviews are differently processed in the local search context (e.g., searching for a restaurant that can be visited immediately) compared with the non-local context (e.g., searching for a restaurant that can be visited in a month), is examined by conducting an experiment. Building on Study 2, Study 3 investigates how tourists' processing of online reviews is affected by another contextual factor, the nature of tourism products; specifically, how the variability of tourism products (i.e., their change in quality over time) influences the way tourists process online reviews, is examined through social media analytics. Results of the three essays provide empirical support for the underlying argument of this dissertation: understanding tourists' responses to online reviews depends on factors that transcend their information characteristics. As a whole, the findings of this dissertation suggest the need for considering the surrounding context to further understand how online reviews affect tourists' decision-making. As practical implications, this dissertation discusses the importance of leveraging various types of information about tourists' context (e.g., location accessed from smartphones, and physiological condition accessed through smartwatches). / Doctor of Philosophy / Tourists use online reviews within specific situations. The effects of such reviews on tourists' decision-making are difficult to explain without considering the surrounding contexts. Depending on when (e.g., before or during the trip), where (e.g., at home or destination), or for which products (e.g., restaurants, attractions, or hotels) they use online reviews, even the same online review can be differently perceived by tourists (e.g., how helpful it is). Therefore, the reviews have an increased or reduced influence on their product choices. This dissertation aims to understand the context-dependence of tourist's use of online reviews. The three essays in this dissertation examine how online reviews are used or processed by tourists under certain context: how online reviews affect tourist's decision-making in the local search context (e.g., searching for "restaurants near me" using smartphones during the trip) (Study 1); how tourists process online reviews while relying on reviews for immediately choosing places to visit (Study 2); and how tourists perceive online reviews when they are recently posted (Study 3). The findings confirm the dynamic nature of tourist's use of online reviews and offer several insights for tourism businesses to hone their strategies on marketing online reviews.

Yes / The paper presents a text analytics framework that analyses online reviews to explore how consumer-perceived negativity corresponding to the supply chain propagates over time and how it affects car sales. In particular, the framework integrates aspect-level sentiment analysis using SentiWordNet, time-series decomposition, and bias-corrected least square dummy variable (LSDVc) – a panel data estimator. The framework facilitates the business community by providing a list of consumers’ contemporary interests in the form of frequently discussed product attributes; quantifying consumer-perceived performance of supply chain (SC) partners and comparing the competitors; and a model assessing various firms’ sales performance. The proposed framework demonstrated to the automobile supply chain using a review dataset received from a renowned car-portal in India. Our findings suggest that consumer-voiced negativity is maximum for dealers and minimum for manufacturing and assembly related features. Firm age, GDP, and review volume significantly influence car sales whereas the sentiments corresponding to SC partners do not. The proposed research framework can help the manufacturers in inspecting their SC partners; realising consumer-cited critical car sales influencers; and accurately predicting the sales, which in turn can help them in better production planning, supply chain management, marketing, and consumer relationships.

This thesis investigates customer-to-customer roles and impacts in the context of service encounters. This topic is studied from two angles: customer interactions during group service encounters and customer perceptions post service encounters. The first angle is a focus on group service encounters that addresses the lack of research on customer-to-customer interactions that occur in customer-to-customer interaction-intensive contexts. These are contexts where the interactions between customers are not peripheral to the service, where there can be an expectation to interact with the other customers, and are common in tourism and hospitality, recreation, and education. The second angle is a focus on service outcomes after the service encounter, including satisfaction, intention to recommend, and online word-of-mouth. Paper 1 explores how firms view and manage customer-to-customer interactions during group service encounters. It finds that the differences in attitude and conduct of firms create four possible stances toward customer-to-customer interaction. Paper 2 delves deeper into how customer-to-customer interactions impact the design and delivery of group service encounters, develops a typology of customer cohort climates (CCCs), and identifies how each CCC can be created through four elements of group service encounters. Paper 3  investigates how positive and negative customer-to-customer interactions impact service outcomes and finds that customer-to-customer interaction is a dissatisfier. Paper 4 examines how customers produce online hotel reviews and finds that content analysis of online reviews yields similar findings to more traditional quantitative research methods. This thesis advances research on the impact of customers on each other and provides evidence that other customers can and should be managed to achieve desired service outcomes. It further proposes how these interactions can be managed to further enhance service firm offerings. / <p>QC 20160516</p>

La thèse sur papiers analyse les impacts des faux avis en ligne sur les relations sur le marché. Une séquence structurée des études qualitatives et quantitatives explore les perceptions des consommateurs et leur comportement relativement aux faux avis et étudie les solutions possibles pour détecter la communication trompeuse. La recherche confirme l'importance du phénomène des faux avis en ligne pour le marché et la nécessité de mesures opportunes anti-tromperie; des solutions pratiques et un agenda de recherche sont suggérés. / The paper-based thesis analyses the impacts of fake online reviews on marketplace relationships. A structured sequence of qualitative and quantitative studies explores customer perceptions and behavior with regard to fake reviews and investigates possible solutions to detect deceptive communication. The research supports the importance of the phenomenon of fake online reviews for the market and the necessity of timely anti-deception measures; both practical solutions and research agenda are suggested.

There is a lack of attention and understanding of how smaller hotel businesses understand and engage with social responsibility. The lack of understanding has led to a situation where the knowledge of how hotel corporations operate regarding Corporate social responsibility unproblematically is applied across scales onto Small and medium sized hotels behaviour regarding social responsibility. This thesis examines this lack of understanding by analysing discourses related to social responsibility that can be found in online reviews written by former guests of SME hotels in Tällberg, Sweden. The results of the discourse analysis show that SME hotels mainly perform social responsibility through the performance of hospitality and by acting as cultural brokers allowing socialisation to happen. They suggest that the notion most SMEs have of hospitality links into social responsibility without them realising it. However, the unreflective conflation of knowledge across scales regarding social responsibility and the term Corporate social responsibility risk disrupting this performance, as it makes SME hotel owners and managers act counterproductively to this. Thus, this thesis suggests that the very use of the term CSR when talking about SMEs in the hotel sector is problematic. Furthermore, the findings also suggest that the creation and performance of social responsibility in hotel SMEs are mainly dialogic, unlike previously assumed, as it is created in the interaction between two persons.

El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar como las reseñas en el social media afectan al valor de marca de los hoteles 5 estrellas en el distrito de Miraflores de la ciudad de Lima. El estudio inicia con la investigación en fuentes con la finalidad de definir los conceptos de: social media, reseñas online, turismo, conocimiento de marca, imagen de marca y lealtad de marca; además de conocer el contexto actual del sector hotelero. Después, se enmarca en una investigación que utiliza una metodología mixta (cualitativa y cuantitativa) con un alcance exploratorio y correlacionar. En la fase cualitativa, se realizan entrevistas a profundidad y estructuradas a expertos digitales del social media y branding. Asimismo, usuarios representantes del servicio hotelero. Finalmente, en la fase cuantitativa se aplica un cuestionario a una muestra de 282 personas hospedajes en los 9 hoteles de cinco estrellas de Miraflores. Se obtiene como resultado que efectivamente las reseñas positivas o negativas afectan al valor de marca de los hoteles. Por ello, a mayor experiencia del cliente con las plataformas donde el consumidor participa y crea contenido, esta influirá en sus actitudes hacia valor de marca de los hoteles. Además, influye tanto en su decisión de compra como selección del hotel, dependiendo de las calificaciones anteriores en dichas plataformas. Finalmente, se proponen acciones para los gerentes de los hoteles. / The objective of this research is to analyze how the reviews in the social media affect the brand value of the five stars hotels in the Miraflores district of the city of Lima. The study begins with research in sources with the purpose of defining the concepts of: social media, online reviews, tourism, brand awareness, brand image and brand loyalty; besides knowing the current context of the hotel sector. Later, it is part of a research that uses a mixed methodology (qualitative and quantitative) with an exploratory and correlational scope. In the qualitative phase, in-depth and structured interviews are conducted with digital experts of social media and branding. Also, users representing the hotel service. Finally, in the quantitative phase a questionnaire is applied to a sample of 282 people staying at the 9 five-star hotels in Miraflores. The result is that effectively positive or negative reviews affect the brand value of the hotels. Therefore, the greater the customer experience with the platforms where the consumer participates and creates content, this will influence their attitudes towards the brand value of the hotels. In addition, it influences both your purchase decision and hotel selection, depending on the previous ratings on those platforms. Finally, actions are proposed for hotel managers. / Trabajo de investigación