For many online businesses, online reviews are crucially important to managing reputation, word-of-mouth sales, and, ultimately, their survival. Hence, more and more online business owners are posting public responses to both positive and negative reviews. But do these responses change anything? And, if so, which types of responses are the most effective for strengthening customer relationship and increasing the chances of repeat business? With two surveys and a series of partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analyses, we tested three relevant hypotheses to answer these questions. The results show that when business replies to online reviews with promotional information, consumers perceive the seller to be self-interested, and both relationship quality and repurchase intention decrease. However, sincere responses that do not contain promotional information, such as gratitude and apology, are highly correlated to positive relationship quality and the likelihood of future repeat business. These findings enrich the academic literature on online reviews, and the recommendations stemming from our results should be of interest to any business that relies on their online reputation for survival.

对于许多在线企业来说，在线评论对于管理声誉、口碑销售以及最终的生存至关重要。因此，越来越多的在线企业主发布了对正面和负面评论的公开回应。但这些反应会改变什么吗？如果是这样，哪种类型的响应对于加强客户关系和增加回头客的机会最有效？通过两项调查和一系列偏最小二乘结构方程模型 (PLS-SEM) 分析，我们测试了三个相关假设来回答这些问题。结果表明，当商家回复在线评论时提供促销信息时，消费者会认为卖家是自私的，关系质量和重复购买意愿都会下降。然而，不包含促销信息的真诚回应，例如感谢和道歉，与积极的关系质量和未来回头客的可能性高度相关。这些发现丰富了在线评论的学术文献，并且任何依赖在线声誉生存的企业都应该对我们的研究结果提出的建议感兴趣。