A Comparative Study Between Chinese And English Hotels' Response Strategies To The Negative Comments From The Perspective Of Rapport Management Theory

Nowadays,the network technology is widely applied in people‘s lives.Customers‘ comments on products on the web platform can not only provide other consumers with advice and decision-making reference information,but also provide some improvement measures for the seller.Similarly,how sellers respond to consumer comments,especially negative comments,plays an important role in attracting customers and managing interpersonal rapport.This study attempts to compare the response strategies to negative comments of Chinese and English hotel managers from the perspective of Rapport Management theory.Through the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods,the study analyzes the Chinese and English hotel managers‘ response to customers‘ negative comments respectively,compare the similarities and differences of the two groups‘ response strategies and reveal the pragmatic functions of each response strategy.The present study selects 100 pieces of hotel negative comments from the Chinese travel website ?Tongcheng? and 100 pieces from the ?Tripadvisor? in the UK as a corpus.The corpus analysis refers to the classification of Victor Ho(2017): response strategies include two types(deny problem and manage rapport).The study tries to investigate the following questions:(1)What are the Chinese and English hotel managers‘ response strategies to customers‘ negative comments respectively?(2)What are the similarities and differences of Chinese and English hotel managers‘ response strategies to customers‘ negative comments and why?(3)What are the pragmatic functions of each response strategy to negative comments of Chinese and English hotels under the Rapport Management Theory?Through the analysis of the corpus,the study finds:(1)There are five moves of denying problem in Chinese replies.They are framing problem as isolated incidents,suggesting or recommending,highlighting facility or service,emphasizing practice or mission,challenging reviewers‘ decisions.There are five moves of managing rapport in Chinese replies.They are acknowledging problem,rectifying problem,apologizing,explaining cause of problem,and showing appreciation.There are six moves of denying problem in English replies.Among them,In addition to the same five moves as Chinese,there is another move that is emphasizing positive comments.As for managing rapport,there are five English moves which are to manage rapport with the customers.They are rectifying problem,apologizing,explaining cause of problem,showing appreciation,and expressing feelings.(2)From the denying problem aspect,it is found that the similarities are that highlighting facility or service accounts the most in both Chinese and English responses,and challenge reviewer‘s decision is the move accounting the least.The differences are that the number of deny problem responses of English is nearly twice as many as in Chinese.Then,from the managing rapport aspect,showing appreciation and apologizing are the two most frequently used moves both in Chinese and English responses.The differences are that the total number of manage rapport response moves of Chinese are higher than that of English.What‘s more,English don‘t use the move of acknowledging problem in their responses.And Chinese don‘t use the move of expressing feelings.In general,Chinese responses tend to use manage rapport responses,whereas English responses use both deny problem and manage rapport frequently.(3)After the analysis of every response strategy,the interpersonal pragmatic functions of each response strategy are classified into three patterns.They are enhancing interpersonal rapport,maintaining interpersonal rapport,and neglecting interpersonal rapport.This research enriches the discourse analysis based on Rapport Management Theory to a certain extent,and helps hotel managers use reasonable rapport management strategies to attract consumers and improve hotel management efficiency when responding to negative comments.