Different cultures review hotels differently

Abstract

The issue of language and culture is recognized as paramount for the service industry, but has been poorly addressed by the academic literature. Framed within the Social Representation Theory and operationalized with the concept of high- and low- context cultures conceptualized by Hall, this research aims to explore differences in reviews written in different languages. Reviews written in French (high-context) and German (low-context) were analyzed in the original formats using descriptive statistics, automatic text analysis, network data visualization, and technical attribute assessment to seize the differences. This research found comparing to high-context culture, low-context culture reviews have high polarity but low subjectivity. Given the intrinsic differences in polarity and subjectivity between cultures, researchers and practitioners should monitor the changes of sentiments by cultures to reduce the bias resulted from the intrinsic differences. Furthermore, data visualizations show different topics between cultures and offer additional insights of the differences.