Research On The Impact Of Manner Of Online Management Response On Customer Satisfaction In Hotel Industry

As the growing influence of online world-of-mouth platform, online customer review has become an important reference for people when they make purchase decision. More firms take active service recovery to negative reviews. On one hand, online social media provides a good way for customers both to comment on products and services and to read this comments. On the other hand, it provides a tool for firms to reply to these reviews. The importance of online management responses has attracted attention both in industry and in academic circles. In academic circles, many researchers have concluded that online management responses can significantly influence sales, online bookings and customer satisfaction. In industry, more and more firms have taken actions in making online management responses. However, as to how to make online management responses, such as in which way, manner, and attitude, have not been investigated thoroughly. This research focuses on the impact of the way of the online management responses on customer satisfaction.This research uses the data of online customer reviews and onl ine management responses on ctrip.com and build panel data model to investigate the impact of the way of the online management responses on customer satisfaction.In the first, this research defines the way of online management responses as follows: timeliness, speed, length and manner. Then use four variables as the proxy variables. As to the fourth aspect, we have to find method to characterize the manner of management. This research uses some technologies in machine learning such as word segmentation and topic model. In the process of building model, this research considers the problem of self-selection bias, fixed effect and time series.This research concludes that the timeliness of online management response has significant positive influence on customer satisfaction. In other words, the more timely the hotel makes the online management response, the higher the customer’s next review rating. This effect can interact with the previous customer satisfaction and the previous length of customer review. Further, the more quickly the hotel makes the online management response, the higher the customer’s next review rating. Besides, the length of online management response also positively influences the customer satisfaction. At last, this research finds that auto response can negatively influence the customer satisfaction. On the contrary, when hotels apologize or show gratitude, the customer satisfaction will become higher.This research analyses the impact of the way of the online management responses on customer satisfaction systematically. It is meaningful and useful both in academic circles and in in industry. These theories and methods can h elp firms make the right service recovery strategy, which assists them to make better use of online social media, get higher customer satisfaction and build stronger firm competition.