Sincere or Falsehearted? Investigation of Online Reviews and Merchant Response

IF 4.2 3区管理学 Q2 BUSINESS

International Journal of Electronic Commerce Pub Date : 2023-04-03 DOI:10.1080/10864415.2023.2184238

Xiaolin Li, Li Ma, Benjiang Lu, Kexin Huang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACT Academia and industry widely believe that merchants’ customized response is an indispensable tool for handling online reviews, particularly negative reviews caused by service failures. However, whether merchants actually fulfill the promises they make in their responses remains unclear. On the basis of the literature on online reviews and service recovery, this study utilizes a series of textual features of online reviews and merchant responses via text analysis, including review topics, review sentiments, and response pertinence, to construct a novel indicator. This indicator, the consistency between merchants’ words and deeds (hereafter referred to as CWD), can be used to infer the degree of merchant response fulfillment. In particular, this study first proposes two indicators, namely, response and action levels, and then measures their difference to evaluate the CWD level of merchants. CWD can reflect the effort exerted by merchants to achieve service recovery. This study significantly contributes to the literature on service recovery and online reviews. The research findings derived from this study can help urge merchants to provide consumers with improved products and services. They can also be applied to the online ranking system to enhance platform fairness and protect the long-term interests of consumers and other stakeholders.

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真诚还是虚伪？在线评论和商家反应调查

学术界和业界普遍认为，商家定制化回复是处理在线评论，尤其是服务故障导致的差评不可或缺的工具。然而，商家是否真的履行了他们在回应中做出的承诺，目前尚不清楚。本研究在网上评论与服务恢复相关文献的基础上，通过文本分析，利用网上评论和商家回复的一系列文本特征，包括评论主题、评论情绪和回复针对性，构建一个新的指标。这一指标，即商家言行的一致性(以下简称CWD)，可以用来推断商家履行响应的程度。特别的是，本研究首先提出了两个指标，即响应水平和行动水平，然后测量它们之间的差异来评估商家的CWD水平。CWD可以反映商家为实现服务恢复所付出的努力。本研究对服务恢复和在线评论的文献有重要贡献。本研究得出的研究结果可以帮助商家为消费者提供更好的产品和服务。它们也可以应用于在线排名系统，以增强平台公平性，保护消费者和其他利益相关者的长远利益。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Journal of Electronic Commerce 工程技术-计算机：软件工程

CiteScore

7.20

自引率

16.00%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： The International Journal of Electronic Commerce is the leading refereed quarterly devoted to advancing the understanding and practice of electronic commerce. It serves the needs of researchers as well as practitioners and executives involved in electronic commerce. The Journal aims to offer an integrated view of the field by presenting approaches of multiple disciplines. Electronic commerce is the sharing of business information, maintaining business relationships, and conducting business transactions by digital means over telecommunications networks. The Journal accepts empirical and interpretive submissions that make a significant novel contribution to this field.