ABSTRACT

The rapid growth of online consumer review (OCR) systems such as Tripadvisor has greatly reconfigured the operating environment for numerous businesses and organizations. As OCRs become a crucial source of information for consumer decision-making, we pose a twofold question: how do restaurants perceive OCRs and how do they respond to being evaluated on them? In answering this question, we distinguish between different types of organizational responses: staff management, goal setting, operational practices and reputation management. We base our study on in-depth interviews with mid-price restaurants in Amsterdam. Our findings show that reactivity related to staff management, goal setting and operational practices is limited and highly deliberate. Instead, reputational responses are more extensive. That is, restaurants respond to and even appropriate OCRs in order to promote themselves, to signal professionalism, and to limit the reputational damage of negative reviews. On the basis of these findings, we argue that more attention be paid to the agency of evaluated entities and that OCR systems be theorized more as a multisided platform with a hybrid functionality of both valuation and marketing.

摘要

Tripadvisor 等在线消费者评论 (OCR) 系统的快速增长极大地重新配置了众多企业和组织的运营环境。随着 OCR 成为消费者决策的重要信息来源，我们提出了一个双重问题：餐厅如何看待 OCR 以及他们如何回应对它们的评估？在回答这个问题时，我们区分了不同类型的组织响应：员工管理、目标设定、运营实践和声誉管理。我们的研究基于对阿姆斯特丹中等价位餐厅的深入采访。我们的研究结果表明，与员工管理、目标设定和运营实践相关的反应是有限的，而且是经过深思熟虑的。相反，声誉反应更为广泛。那是，餐厅响应甚至适当的 OCR 以提升自己，表明专业性，并限制负面评论对声誉的损害。基于这些发现，我们认为应更多地关注被评估实体的代理，并将 OCR 系统理论化为具有估值和营销混合功能的多边平台。