OTA Optimization: Evaluating Consumers’ Purchase Intention from Online Negative Review Responses Analysis

Abstract

With the development of online tourism business, reserving tourism products has gradually become one of the consumption modes for consumers. However, due to the limitations of online shopping and the intangible characteristics of tourism service products, consumers rely more on the external information to make purchasing decisions. Online reviews and responses to them given by merchants, as a crucial part of the external information, especially the negative review responses, however, have not been studied in great depth. Therefore, how to mine and analyse these data, and understand the consumers’ purchase intention on different response strategies, then design personalized response strategies data to deal with different service remedies, thereby increasing the service responsiveness and competitiveness, has become imperative. Based on the Attribution theory, this study attributes the online negative review responses collected on the Online Travel Agency (OTA) platforms to three types of response strategies, then explores the effects of different negative review response strategies on consumers' purchase intention from a quantitative approach. This work contributes to the optimization of e-commerce applications and the consumer relationship management of merchants.