ABSTRACT

Research in the field of marketing and crisis communication has shown that language errors negatively affect consumers’ image of a company and their buying intentions. We extended this line of research to the hospitality industry. Using a between-subjects design, we tested whether language errors in a hotel response to a negative online guest review affect customers’ perceptions of the hotel and their booking intentions in two service recovery contexts: a customer complaint regarding a service failure and a customer complaint which the hotel could not be held responsible for. The results show that language errors negatively influence customers’ perceptions of the hotel’s expertise, its reputation, and its trustworthiness and affect their booking intentions, irrespective of the type of complaint. Therefore, hotels should pay significant attention to avoid language errors in their online service recovery communication.

摘要

营销和危机沟通领域的研究表明，语言错误会对消费者的公司形象及其购买意愿产生负面影响。我们将此研究范围扩展到酒店业。使用主体间设计，我们测试了酒店对负面在线客人评论的回应中的语言错误是否会在两种服务恢复情况下影响客户对酒店的看法及其预订意图：客户投诉服务失败和客户投诉酒店概不负责。结果表明，无论投诉的类型如何，语言错误都会对客户对酒店专业知识、声誉和可信度的看法产生负面影响，并影响他们的预订意图。所以，