• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.25-51
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• 2009

This model was empirically developed to test the effect of medical service quality and hospital's reputation on customer satisfaction, repurchase intention, and negative word of mouth as to disease severity. The model was tested in the context of the hospital industry. The findings are as follows. First, medical service provider's functional quality and technical service quality have significant effect on customer satisfaction. Second, hospital's reputation has positive(+) effect on customer satisfaction and significant negative effect on negative word of mouth. Third, customer satisfaction with medical service quality has significantly positive effect on customer's repurchase intention and has negative(-) effect on customer's negative word of mouth. Furthermore, customer's negative word of mouth has negative effect on their repurchase intention. Fourth, as to different disease severity, medical service quality and hospital's reputation have different effect on customer satisfaction, repurchase intention, and negative word of mouth. When patients get slightly ill, functional service quality and technical service quality have direct influence on customer satisfaction which has positive influence on repurchase intention and negative influence on negative word of mouth. Finally, negative word of mouth has negative effect on customer's repurchase intention. However, while hospital's reputation doesn't have effect on customer satisfaction, the reputation has significantly negative effect on negative word of mouth. When patients get seriously ill, only functional service quality has positive effect on customer satisfaction which influences on customer's repurchase intention and negatively influences on negative word of mouth. On the contrary, negative word of mouth doesn't influence on customer's repurchase intention as patients want to treat serious diseases in the large general hospitals even though negative word of mouth is known to them.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.43-61
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• 2016

Customer reviews help potential customers make purchasing decisions. However, the prevalence of reviews on websites push the customer to sift through them and change the focus from a mere search to identifying which of the available reviews are valuable and useful for the purchasing decision at hand. To identify useful reviews, websites have developed different mechanisms to give customers options when evaluating existing reviews. Websites allow users to rate the usefulness of a customer review as helpful or not. Amazon.com uses a ratio-type helpfulness, while Yelp.com uses a count-type usefulness index. This usefulness index provides helpful reviews to future potential purchasers. This study investigated the effects of sentiment and readability on useful votes for customer reviews. Similar studies on the relationship between sentiment and readability have focused on the ratio-type usefulness index utilized by websites such as Amazon.com. In this study, Yelp.com's count-type usefulness index for restaurant reviews was used to investigate the relationship between sentiment/readability and usefulness votes. Yelp.com's online customer reviews for stores in the beverage and food categories were used for the analysis. In total, 170,294 reviews containing information on a store's reputation and popularity were used. The control variables were the review length, store reputation, and popularity; the independent variables were the sentiment and readability, while the dependent variable was the number of helpful votes. The review rating is the moderating variable for the review sentiment and readability. The length is the number of characters in a review. The popularity is the number of reviews for a store, and the reputation is the general average rating of all reviews for a store. The readability of a review was calculated with the Coleman-Liau index. The sentiment is a positivity score for the review as calculated by SentiWordNet. The review rating is a preference score selected from 1 to 5 (stars) by the review author. The dependent variable (i.e., usefulness votes) used in this study is a count variable. Therefore, the Poisson regression model, which is commonly used to account for the discrete and nonnegative nature of count data, was applied in the analyses. The increase in helpful votes was assumed to follow a Poisson distribution. Because the Poisson model assumes an equal mean and variance and the data were over-dispersed, a negative binomial distribution model that allows for over-dispersion of the count variable was used for the estimation. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression was used to model count variables with excessive zeros and over-dispersed count outcome variables. With this model, the excess zeros were assumed to be generated through a separate process from the count values and therefore should be modeled as independently as possible. The results showed that positive sentiment had a negative effect on gaining useful votes for positive reviews but no significant effect on negative reviews. Poor readability had a negative effect on gaining useful votes and was not moderated by the review star ratings. These findings yield considerable managerial implications. The results are helpful for online websites when analyzing their review guidelines and identifying useful reviews for their business. Based on this study, positive reviews are not necessarily helpful; therefore, restaurants should consider which type of positive review is helpful for their business. Second, this study is beneficial for businesses and website designers in creating review mechanisms to know which type of reviews to highlight on their websites and which type of reviews can be beneficial to the business. Moreover, this study highlights the review systems employed by websites to allow their customers to post rating reviews.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.147-175
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of store choice criteria on customer satisfaction and store loyalty, and the moderating effects of customer emotions on the causal relationship between store choice criteria and customer satisfaction. In this regard, this study tries to identify the effects of store choice criteria on customer satisfaction and store loyalty in case of mass merchandisers, and to analyze the moderating effects of customer emotions on the causal relationship between store choice criteria and customer satisfaction. For this purpose, 300 customers, who have ever shopped at mass merchandisers, were surveyed and 246 valid responses were finally used for the data analysis. The results of this study are as follows. First, out of six store choice criteria, product factors, store reputation and physical environment turn out to have statistically significant effects on customer satisfaction. This result confirms those of the previous studies. On the other hand, store accessibility, subsidiary facilities and store atmosphere are not found to have statistically significant effects on customer satisfaction. This result is somewhat different from those of previous studies, and so further research on the subject needs to be carried out. Secondly, it turns out that customer satisfaction has a statistically significant effect on store loyalty, which is in line with the results of previous studies that perceived emotions affect customers' store attitudes which in turn influence their revisit intentions. Thirdly, as for the moderating effects of customer emotions on the relationship between store choice criteria and customer satisfaction, pleasure moderates the effects of store accessibility, subsidiary facilities and store atmosphere on customer satisfaction, arousal moderates the effects of product factors, subsidiary facilities and store reputation on customer satisfaction, and finally dominance moderates the effects of product factors and subsidiary facilities on customer satisfaction. These findings partially support the results of previous studies that customers' in-store emotional experiences such as feeling good or bad enhance their store loyalty.