IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v10y2023i1d10.1057_s41599-023-01979-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do managerial communications improve customer satisfaction and eWOM? The moderating effect of response authenticity

Author

Listed:
  • Saram Han

    (Seoul National University of Science and Technology)

  • Christopher K. Anderson

    (Cornell University)

  • Kyunghwa Chung

    (VinUniversity)

Abstract

As customer reviews are becoming increasingly valued in the hotel industry, hotel managers are actively responding to customer reviews, and many researchers are investigating the effects of managerial responses. Previous studies, however, have mainly focused on open communication that takes place on social platforms or online travel agency (OTA) websites. Considerations about interaction contexts and specific response styles are also lacking. These limitations raise research questions, such as whether private interactions between managers and customers would be effective, whether the effect would differ between dissatisfied and satisfied customers, and what role the authenticity of managerial responses would play in these interactions. To address these questions, we investigated the effect of private managerial interactions. The effect of a managerial apology on customers’ future satisfaction, the effect of a managerial “thank you” on customers’ future electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), and the moderating effect of response style (i.e., personalization and length) were examined. We analyzed data from a customer satisfaction survey in which customers leave feedback after their stay and hotel managers respond to each customer personally via email. Our results reveal that a private managerial apology increases customers’ future satisfaction only when it is long or personalized. A private managerial “thank you” positively affects customers’ eWOM in the next period. This research provides empirical evidence for the effect of private managerial interactions, extending the existing discussions on the effect of managerial responses to the private digital communication context. This research contributes to the research areas of managerial response, service recovery, and digital communications.

Suggested Citation

  • Saram Han & Christopher K. Anderson & Kyunghwa Chung, 2023. "Do managerial communications improve customer satisfaction and eWOM? The moderating effect of response authenticity," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:10:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-023-01979-2
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-023-01979-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-023-01979-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-023-01979-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Béal, Mathieu & Suri, Anshu & Nguyen, Nguyen & Grégoire, Yany & Sénécal, Sylvain, 2022. "Is service recovery of equal importance for private vs public complainers?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 392-400.
    2. Sparks, Beverley A. & So, Kevin Kam Fung & Bradley, Graham L., 2016. "Responding to negative online reviews: The effects of hotel responses on customer inferences of trust and concern," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 74-85.
    3. Liye Ma & Baohong Sun & Sunder Kekre, 2015. "The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease—An Empirical Analysis of Customer Voice and Firm Intervention on Twitter," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(5), pages 627-645, September.
    4. Labrecque, Lauren I., 2014. "Fostering Consumer–Brand Relationships in Social Media Environments: The Role of Parasocial Interaction," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 134-148.
    5. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Davide Proserpio & Georgios Zervas, 2017. "Online Reputation Management: Estimating the Impact of Management Responses on Consumer Reviews," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(5), pages 645-665, September.
    7. Wendy W. Moe & David A. Schweidel, 2012. "Online Product Opinions: Incidence, Evaluation, and Evolution," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 372-386, May.
    8. Wenlong Liu & Rongrong Ji, 2019. "Do Hotel Responses Matter?: A Comprehensive Perspective on Investigating Online Reviews," Information Resources Management Journal (IRMJ), IGI Global, vol. 32(3), pages 70-89, July.
    9. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    10. Judith A. Chevalier & Yaniv Dover & Dina MayzlinDina Mayzlin, 2018. "Channels of Impact: User Reviews When Quality Is Dynamic and Managers Respond," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(5), pages 688-709, September.
    11. Mansur Khamitov & Yany Grégoire & Anshu Suri, 2020. "A systematic review of brand transgression, service failure recovery and product-harm crisis: integration and guiding insights," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 519-542, May.
    12. Ana B. Casado-Díaz & Leonor M. Pérez-Naranjo & Ricardo Sellers-Rubio, 2017. "Aggregate consumer ratings and booking intention: the role of brand image," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 11(3), pages 543-562, September.
    13. Stephen Pudney, 2008. "The dynamics of perception: modelling subjective wellbeing in a short panel," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(1), pages 21-40, January.
    14. Wei Chen & Bin Gu & Qiang Ye & Kevin Xiaoguo Zhu, 2019. "Measuring and Managing the Externality of Managerial Responses to Online Customer Reviews," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(1), pages 81-96, March.
    15. Boulding, William & Kirmani, Amna, 1993. "A Consumer-Side Experimental Examination of Signaling Theory: Do Consumers Perceive Warranties as Signals of Quality?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 20(1), pages 111-123, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhao, Yan & Wen, Lingling & Feng, Xiangnan & Li, Ran & Lin, Xiaolin, 2020. "How managerial responses to online reviews affect customer satisfaction: An empirical study based on additional reviews," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    2. Ao Shen & Peng Wang & Yongyuan Ma, 2022. "When crowding‐in and when crowding‐out? The boundary conditions on the relationship between negative online reviews and online sales," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(6), pages 2016-2032, September.
    3. Erfan Rezvani & Christian Rojas, 2022. "Firm responsiveness to consumers' reviews: The effect on online reputation," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 898-922, November.
    4. Katsumata, Sotaro & Nishimoto, Akihiro & Kannan, P.K., 2023. "Brand competitiveness and resilience to exogenous shock: Usage of smartphone apps during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    5. Mingwen Yang & Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng & Vijay Mookerjee, 2019. "Prescribing Response Strategies to Manage Customer Opinions: A Stochastic Differential Equation Approach," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 351-374, June.
    6. Ji Wu & Haichuan Zhao & Haipeng (Allan) Chen, 2021. "Coupons or Free Shipping? Effects of Price Promotion Strategies on Online Review Ratings," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(2), pages 633-652, June.
    7. Khim-Yong Goh & Cheng-Suang Heng & Zhijie Lin, 2013. "Social Media Brand Community and Consumer Behavior: Quantifying the Relative Impact of User- and Marketer-Generated Content," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(1), pages 88-107, March.
    8. Fan Zou & Yupeng Li & Jiahuan Huang, 2022. "Group interaction and evolution of customer reviews based on opinion dynamics towards product redesign," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 1131-1151, December.
    9. Carlson, Keith & Kopalle, Praveen K. & Riddell, Allen & Rockmore, Daniel & Vana, Prasad, 2023. "Complementing human effort in online reviews: A deep learning approach to automatic content generation and review synthesis," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 54-74.
    10. Kurt, Didem & Pauwels, Koen & Kurt, Ahmet C. & Srinivasan, Shuba, 2021. "The asymmetric effect of warranty payments on firm value: The moderating role of advertising, R&D, and industry concentration," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 817-837.
    11. Sheng, Jie, 2019. "Being Active in Online Communications: Firm Responsiveness and Customer Engagement Behaviour," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 40-51.
    12. T. Ravichandran & Chaoqun Deng, 2023. "Effects of Managerial Response to Negative Reviews on Future Review Valence and Complaints," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(1), pages 319-341, March.
    13. Hülya Karaman, 2021. "Online Review Solicitations Reduce Extremity Bias in Online Review Distributions and Increase Their Representativeness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4420-4445, July.
    14. Amy Pei & Dina Mayzlin, 2022. "Influencing Social Media Influencers Through Affiliation," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(3), pages 593-615, May.
    15. Radostina Prodanova, 2021. "An Analysis of Hotel's Responses to Negative and Mixed Online Reviews in Varna," Izvestia Journal of the Union of Scientists - Varna. Economic Sciences Series, Union of Scientists - Varna, Economic Sciences Section, vol. 10(3), pages 33-43, December.
    16. He, Haonan & Wang, Shanyong, 2019. "Cost-benefit associations in consumer inventory problem with uncertain benefit," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 271-284.
    17. G. Tomas M. Hult & Forrest V. Morgeson III & Udit Sharma & Claes Fornell, 2022. "Customer satisfaction and international business: A multidisciplinary review and avenues for research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(8), pages 1695-1733, October.
    18. Lee, Hyoungjin & Park, Junmin & Chung, Chris Changwha, 2022. "CEO compensation, governance structure, and foreign direct investment in conflict-prone countries," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6).
    19. Hermansson, Cecilia, 2016. "Relationships between bank customers’ risk attitudes and their balance sheets," Working Paper Series 15/12, Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Real Estate and Construction Management & Banking and Finance.
    20. Wu, Jintao & Wu, Tong & Schlegelmilch, Bodo B., 2020. "Seize the Day: How Online Retailers Should Respond to Positive Reviews," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 52-60.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:10:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-023-01979-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.