Closed-form evaluations and open-ended comment options: How do they affect customer online review behavior and reflect satisfaction with hotels?

摘要

The online review systems of digital platforms feature a variety of designs. This study examines how closed-form evaluations and open-ended textual comment options affect customers' online review writing behaviors and reflect satisfaction with hotels. We find that direct and spillover effects exist. These refer to the effects of customers' closed-form evaluations of a product or service attribute on their reviews of the same attribute and other attributes in their open-ended comments, respectively. Regarding the direct effect, positive closed-form evaluations of attributes reduce customers' behaviors of writing details about the same attributes in open-ended comments, but negative closed-form evaluations of attributes increase that behavior. The increasing effect is greater than the reducing effect. Regarding the spillover effect, closed-form evaluations of certain attributes increase customers' behaviors of writing details about other attributes in open-ended comments. Additionally, we find that the heterogeneity effect lies in the different roles of closed-form evaluations and open-ended textual comments in reflecting customers' overall satisfaction. Open-ended comments about the advantages of the attributes have a more significant effect than the closed-form evaluations of the same attributes in reflecting overall customer satisfaction, but closed-form evaluations better reflect customers' low overall satisfaction with the disadvantages of the attributes. The direct, spillover, and heterogeneity effects on customers' evaluations and comments regarding independent hotels are higher than those effects on evaluations and comments regarding chain hotels. The findings provide insights for companies to design review systems, understand customer perceptions, and use the positive electronic word-of-mouth effect.