The effects of online customer reviews and managerial responses on travelers' decision-making processes

This paper reports on two experimental studies in which we measured the effects of positive and negative evaluations of hotel attributes in online customer reviews on travelers' decision-making processes. First, we disentangled the impact of guest evaluations of three different types of hotel attributes (cognitive, sensory and affective) on readers' booking intentions and their intentions to recommend the hotel. We found that both variables are positively affected by the presence of positive evaluations of sensory and cognitive hotel attributes and, to a lesser extent, by the presence of positive evaluations of affective hotel attributes. Next, we compared the added value of two different types of managerial responses. We found that personalized managerial responses are significantly more important than general responses. Moreover, if the online hotel review contains a mix of positive and negative evaluations of cognitive, sensory and affective hotel attributes, personalized managerial responses can significantly boost the effectiveness of the guest review (i.e., attitude towards the hotel and the impact on decision-making with regard to booking the hotel) compared to generic managerial responses.