Online Reputation Management: Estimating the Impact of Management Responses on Consumer Reviews

摘要: Failure to meet a consumer's expectations can result in negative review, which have lasting, damaging impact on firm's reputation, and its ability attract new customers. To mitigate the reputational harm of reviews many firms now publicly respond them. How effective is this reputation management strategy improving reputation? We empirically answer question by exploiting difference managerial practice across two hotel review platforms, TripAdvisor Expedia: while hotels regularly their reviews, they almost never do so Expedia. Based observation, we use difference-in-differences identify causal responses consumer ratings comparing changes following decision begin responding against baseline same hotel's Expedia ratings. find that hotels, account for 56% our data, see an average increase 0.12 stars receive after start responding. Moreover, show does not arise from quality investments. Instead, consistent with shift reviewer selection: consumers poor experience become less likely leave when