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Corporate Strategies for Responding to Negative Comments on Restaurant Pages on Facebook  

Song, Ja-Hyun (School of Hotel and Restaurant Administration, Oklahoma State University)
Kim, Hyun-Jung (Dept. of Hotel & Tourism, Daegu University)
Publication Information
Culinary science and hospitality research / v.22, no.6, 2016 , pp. 61-70 More about this Journal
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of a company's response strategies (response type, communication style, and response sincerity) on customer's brand attitude and purchase intentions. A fictional Facebook fan page containing 6 separate scenarios was developed based on actual customer reviews and company responses observed on Facebook restaurant fan pages. Participants were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). A total of 202 responses were obtained; 185 responses were analyzed after deleting insufficient responses. The results of MANOVA found that an accommodative response leads customers to have a more favorable attitude towards a brand and have stronger purchasing intentions. In addition, customers who perceive the company's response to a negative review as sincere are more likely to have a positive brand attitude and purchasing intentions, as compared to those who perceive it as either insincere or neutral.
Keywords
response type; communication style; response sincerity; brand attitude; purchasing intentions; scenario; negative online review;
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