Rapport Management Strategies In Responding To Negative Airbnb Reviews

Interpersonal pragmatics emerges as a brand-new branch of pragmatics,exploring the dynamic human interaction both in face-to-face or in online context.However,literature review indicates that researches into the management of business-consumer relationship in negative online review responses are still in their infancy,although negative review responses have significant effects on this relationship in the era of online shopping.In the lodging industry,hotels and BNBs have different operating models.Several pragmatic studies investigated hotels' management responses of negative reviews on TripAdvisor,but no attempt has been made to explore the relationship and impression management in BNBs' negative review responses.Moreover,despite the growing tendency of the international travel,there is limited cross-linguistic research that compares online management responses in different languages.To bridge this research gap,the present thesis does a cross-linguistic study of Mandarin and English,identifying rapport management strategies(RMSs),exploring how BNB hosts manage rapport and impression in negative online review responses and comparing the similarities and differences of the employment of RMSs in Mandarin and English.To realize the research purposes,200 Mandarin and 200 English responses to negative online reviews,from February 2017 to October 2018,were collected on Airbnb,one of the most influential BNB online platform across the world.Through the coding process,twenty RMSs including ten rapport strategies and ten disrapport strategies are found in Airbnb hosts' negative review responses.Comparing with previous hotel researches,this study finds that some strategies such as “referring to positive reviews”,“expressing negative emotions”,“refusing further visits” and “underlining reviewers' discourtesies” are peculiar to Airbnb responses.The qualitative analysis indicates that the rapport is managed by Airbnb hosts in management responses through the strategic management of reviewers' face,sociality rights and obligations and interactional goals.Moreover,RMSs are employed to strengthen positive images and weaken negative images of both hosts and BNBs.This thesis discusses the reasons for and the features of the employment of those RMSs.It is revealed from the quantitative analysis that there are some similarities and differences in Mandarin-written and English-written responses.Much more disrapport strategies than rapport ones are used either in Mandarin or in English responses.However,the employment of eight RMSs reaches the significant level,indicating cross-linguistic differences.This thesis discusses the reasons for those similar and different trends.The implications of this thesis are two-folded.Academically,this study facilitates the explanation for online interpersonal pragmatic performance.It is of theoretical significance in the fields of interpersonal pragmatics and cyberpragmatics.It also enriches comparative studies between Mandarin and English.Moreover,this research finds some unique features of Airbnb negative review responses and narrows the research gap that most studies explore hotel review responses.This study is of practical value.It redounds to the benefits of practitioners in the BNB and hospitality industry,and contributes to avoiding misunderstandings and handling conflicts in the context of the international travel.