ABSTRACT

Across many industries, individuals are increasingly relying on customer ratings and reviews on social media. While customer reviews often provide detailed diagnostic information about experiences, customer ratings often reduce the experience down to a simple number. Moreover, there is evidence to support that customer rating inflation is occurring on social media sites over time, especially in the sharing economy, and especially with regard to travel and tourism experiences. This paper conceptualizes how customer experiences are reduced into customer reviews and further abridged into customer ratings in both the traditional and sharing economy contexts. We propose that customers observe how service providers present themselves as a professional (established chain hotel) or amateur (owner operated vacation rental apartment), and then form different service expectations and perceptions accordingly. We investigate 55,110 customer reviews and ratings of New York City’s accommodation providers and indeed find evidence of rating inflation over the eight years studied.

摘要

在许多行业中，个人越来越依赖于客户对社交媒体的评价和评论。客户评论通常会提供有关体验的详细诊断信息，而客户评价通常会将体验降低到一个简单的数字。此外，有证据支持，随着时间的流逝，社交媒体网站上发生了客户评级膨胀，特别是在共享经济中，尤其是在旅行和旅游体验方面。本文概念化了在传统和共享经济环境下如何将客户体验简化为客户评价，并进一步简化为客户评级。我们建议客户观察服务提供商如何将自己呈现为专业人士（老牌连锁酒店）或业余爱好者（所有者经营的度假公寓），然后相应地形成不同的服务期望和看法。我们调查了纽约市住宿供应商的55,110条客户评论和评分，并且确实找到了在所研究的八年中评分通胀的证据。