The effects of user- and marketer-generated content on customer satisfaction: A textual analysis approach

Online reviews and management responses are important user-generated content (UGC) and marketer-generated content (MGC) in social media platforms, which directly reflect the customer’s and merchant’s feedback on a specific consumption and may further affect customer satisfaction. However, as the targeted feedback to UGC, the impact of MGC and the total impact between UGC and MGC are still understudied. In this work, we proposed a systematic analysis procedure for unravelling the impacts of online catering UGC and MGC on customer satisfaction in-depth. By studying the collected 130,412 review data from a leading online catering review website in China, we empirically extracted several new UGC topics using a topic model, thereby expanding the customer value factor set from previous literature; we also quantitatively analyzed their effectiveness in explaining customer satisfaction. We further integrated the UGC and MGC, and causally elaborated upon the usefulness of targeted responses in customer relationship management through difference-in-difference (DID) analysis. The findings validated that the effectiveness of management response on customer future satisfaction is relatively limited compared to the impact brought by the rating variables in UGC, but targeted management responses can perform more effectively in improving customer satisfaction. In addition, moderation roles based on the consumption price and the subjective emotional tendency of customers revealed in the textual comments were also investigated. Thus, this study helped to form a comprehensive understanding of customer satisfaction by contributing to a better quantification of customer value factors and understanding of the influence mechanism for customer satisfaction through the integration of UGC and MGC. Several managerial implications for optimizing customer relationship management in online catering markets were also provided.