Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
“Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!”
Guests’ reactions to solicited reviews
Francesca Magno (corresponding author)
University of Bergamo
Department of Management, Economics and Quantitative Methods
Fabio Cassia
University of Verona,
Department of Business Administration
Attilio Bruni
Sapienza University of Roma
Department of Communication and Social Research
1
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
“Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!”
Guests’ reactions to solicited reviews
Abstract
With the aim of enhancing their online reputation, several hospitality businesses have
started soliciting their guests to write online reviews. Available studies have not yet
evaluated the effects of this strategy. To fill this knowledge gap, this study draws on the
Theory of Psychological Reactance and investigates guests’ attitudinal and behavioral
reactions to received solicitations. Evidence collected from a sample of Italian travelers
indicates that soliciting reviews has both benefits and drawbacks: it increases the number
of reviews for the business, but it also irritates a significant share of guests. Particularly
high levels of irritation arise when a business explicitly asks its guests to write positive
reviews. The implications of these findings for the reputation management strategy of
hospitality businesses are discussed.
Keywords: review solicitation, online reviews, reputation management, user-generated
reviews, eWOM, reactance.
2
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Introduction
As the success of hospitality businesses increasingly depends on their online reputation
(Baka, 2016), managers are exploring suitable strategies to influence e-word-of-mouth
(eWOM) (Tsao et al., 2015). In addition to the well-established activity of responding to
(poor) reviews (O'Connor, 2010; Levy et al., 2013; Xie et al., 2014; Sparks et al., 2016),
recent research (Gössling et al., 2016) has documented the increasing popularity of new
strategies to manipulate online reviews. These forms of manipulation include writing fake
reviews (Anderson and Simester, 2014), offering guests monetary and nonmonetary
compensation to remove negative reviews (Cheng and Loi, 2014), and paying
professional raters to post reviews (Filieri, 2015b).
Among the new manipulation strategies, the solicitation of reviews from guests is gaining
prominence in hospitality businesses (Gössling et al., 2016). Review sites, such as
TripAdvisor, consider review solicitation a fair practice as long as guests are not
approached selectively (i.e., satisfied guests are not the only guests solicited) and as long
as the valence of the reviews is not biased (i.e., guests are not explicitly asked to write
positive reviews) (TripAdvisor, 2015). Nonetheless, hospitality managers are aware that
the infringement of these rules is difficult to detect. This awareness may partly explain
the popularity of this strategy (Gössling et al., 2016).
Academic studies have analyzed the phenomenon of review solicitation by adopting a
conceptual perspective (Baka, 2016) or collecting qualitative evidence from hospitality
3
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
managers (Gössling et al., 2016). No previous study has empirically investigated the
reaction of guests who receive such solicitations. The purpose of this paper is to fill this
gap and to contribute to an understanding of the overall effectiveness of the review
solicitation strategy.
Although available studies have suggested that soliciting online reviews improves the
overall online reputation of a hospitality business (Baka, 2016), guests who receive such
a solicitation may react negatively, thus calling into question the effectiveness of this
strategy. People who write online reviews are often proud of their impartiality and
freedom (Casaló et al., 2015), and they may perceive direct solicitations as restrictions of
this freedom. As posited by the Theory of Psychological Reactance (Brehm, 1966; Brehm
and Brehm, 1981), a person in this situation may experience a state of emotional reaction
and may be highly motivated to restore this restricted freedom. Thus, that person may
develop a negative attitude toward the source of the solicitation and resist the solicitation
(Brehm, 1966; Brehm and Brehm, 1981).
Drawing on this theoretical framework, this study investigates the reaction of guests who
receive solicitations from hospitality businesses to write (positive) online reviews.
Specifically, the analysis covers both the attitudinal effects (i.e., the attitude developed
toward the hospitality business that made the solicitation) and the consequent behavioral
outcomes (i.e., the actual behavior of writing or not writing the review). By directly
4
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
approaching guests who experienced review solicitation, this research will also provide
an overview of the reach of this phenomenon.
The findings of this study will also offer hospitality managers new insights into the effects
of the review solicitation strategy. By combining available conceptual knowledge with
this new evidence about the reactions of solicited guests, managers will be able to make
more informed decisions about the adoption of the review solicitation strategy.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. First, the background for this study
is introduced, and the hypotheses are developed. Then, the methods and the results are
presented. A discussion and conclusions complete the paper.
Background
The increasing popularity of online reviews (or user-generated reviews) has produced
significant challenges for hospitality businesses (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010; Baka, 2016;
Oskam and Zandberg, 2016). The purchase of hospitality products is a complex decision
that requires an intensive informational search given that their nature makes it difficult to
evaluate their quality before consumption (Filieri and McLeay, 2014). To reduce the
uncertainty and risk related to this purchase, guests increasingly rely on online reviews
(Park and Nicolau, 2015) because they regard them as the most trusted sources of
information (Filieri, 2015a). Therefore, online reviews strongly influence guests’
purchase decisions (Filieri, 2015a; Tanford and Montgomery, 2015) and, in turn, have the
5
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
potential to affect hotel performance (Phillips et al., 2016). Previous studies have shown
that both the overall volume of reviews and the share of positive reviews have direct
impacts on purchase intentions (Ladhari and Michaud, 2015; Tsao et al., 2015), prices
(Torres et al., 2015) and sales (Xie et al., 2014; Phillips et al., 2015) (for a detailed review,
see also Cantallops and Salvi (2014)).
Therefore, it is not surprising that a detailed analysis of articles examining online reviews
in tourism and hospitality published in academic journals between 2004 and 2013
(Schuckert et al., 2015) reveals two main research priorities: assessing the impact of
online reviews on guests’ buying behavior and understanding how hospitality businesses
should manage online reviews. In particular, hospitality managers are increasingly
concerned with enhancing both the number and the positive valence of reviews for their
businesses (Gössling et al., 2016). Nonetheless, available review management strategies
and their effectiveness remain largely unexplored (Schuckert et al., 2015; Nguyen and
Coudounaris, 2015).
In addition to traditional strategies, such as responding to negative reviews on online
platforms (Cheng and Loi, 2014; Xie et al., 2016), several studies have documented the
increasing popularity of online review manipulation strategies, defined as “any attempt
to deliberately control or influence online reputation, either with regard to one’s own
business or that of a competitor” (Gössling et al., 2016: 5). Managers can influence online
content by manipulating several agents or actors (platforms, staff, guests, friends, or
6
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
commercial raters). For example, managers can directly engage in fake reviews or can
contact guests to encourage them to remove negative reviews and offer them
compensation (Gössling et al., 2016).
Among the available manipulation strategies, soliciting guests to write (positive) reviews
is increasingly attracting the interest of hospitality managers (Gössling et al., 2016).
Indeed, several academic studies suggest that hospitality managers should solicit online
reviews either from guests in general (Baka, 2016) or only from satisfied guests (e.g.,
Levy et al., 2013; Sparks et al., 2013). Interestingly the most important review sites
usually consider review solicitation a fair practice, but only if it is not applied selectively.
For example, TripAdvisor (2015) states that “attempts by an owner or agent of a property
to boost the reputation of a business by […] selectively soliciting reviews (by email,
surveys or any other means) only from guests who have had a positive experience [are]
fraudulent and thus subject to penalties”. They also remark that it is not acceptable to
offer incentives in exchange for reviews or to explicitly solicit positive reviews
(TripAdvisor, 2015). Nonetheless, evidence from qualitative research shows that several
hospitality managers actively solicit their (satisfied) guests to write (positive) online
reviews (Gössling et al., 2016), although a quantitative estimation of the reach of this
phenomenon is not yet available.
Despite the increasing relevance of this strategy, the reactions of customers who receive
solicitations to post online reviews have not been investigated. To fill this gap, this study
7
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
relies on the Theory of Psychological Reactance (Brehm, 1966; Brehm and Brehm, 1981).
This theory posits that people respond negatively to attempts to influence them (Brehm,
1989). Specifically, when an individual’s freedoms are threatened or lost, that individual
will experience a state of psychological reaction that encourages her/him to restore the
particular freedoms that are threatened (Brehm and Brehm, 1981). This reaction results
in both attitudinal and behavioral effects (Rains, 2013). In fact, the individual will develop
a negative attitude (that may even become hostility) toward the source that has threatened
that behavioral freedom and will then implement the behaviors needed to regain her/his
freedom (Brehm, 1989). This framework is applicable not only to physical threats but
also to feeling states, such as when an individual feels that it is difficult to make a
preferred decision due to external pressures (Shen, 2015).
The intensity of the reaction depends on both the individual’s personality characteristics
and situational factors (Quick et al., 2015). With regard to individual characteristics, each
person is characterized by a certain level of reactance proneness, which reflects the level
of a person’s need for autonomy and independence (Quick et al., 2015). Reactance
proneness is a personality trait; therefore, it is stable over time, and its level does not vary
depending on the situation (Donnell et al., 2001). When a freedom is restricted, reactance
proneness activates the reaction to restore the lost freedom (Shen, 2015). The magnitude
of the reaction is also influenced by situational factors. In particular, stronger threats
(Brehm and Brehm, 1981; Edwards et al., 2002) and threats that contradict an individual’s
8
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
well-formed behavioral intentions (Fitzsimons and Lehmann, 2004) elicit more intense
reactions.
Since the 1970s, the Theory of Psychological Reactance has been applied to understand
consumer reactions to promotional influence, manipulative advertising and other
marketing and communication stimuli (Clee and Wicklund, 1980). Recent studies that
draw upon this theory have examined consumer reactions to stimuli such as the forced
viewing of pop-up ads on the Internet (Edwards et al., 2002), unsolicited product
recommendations (Fitzsimons and Lehmann, 2004), highly personalized commercial
email solicitations (White et al., 2008), frontline service employees’ attempts to influence
customers’ evaluation of their satisfaction (Jones et al., 2014) and product placement in
movies (Marchand et al., 2015). This body of research suggests that, as stated by the
Theory of Psychological Reactance, influence attempts arouse consumers’ negative
attitude toward the source of the restriction and consumers’ behavioral efforts to restore
their restricted freedom.
Drawing on this background, the next section develops hypotheses regarding attitudinal
and behavioral reactions of customers who receive solicitations to write (positive) online
reviews from hospitality businesses.
9
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Hypotheses
Several hospitality studies have highlighted that guests who write reviews engage in
voluntary behavior by reporting their genuine experiences to help future travelers
(Schuckert et al., 2015; Qu and Lee, 2011). Guests who contribute online reviews highly
value their freedom (Casaló et al., 2015). In some cases, they may even decide to write
reviews to exercise collective power over companies (Gretzel and Yoo, 2008). Hence,
previous hospitality research (Casaló et al., 2015) has highlighted that particular care
should be taken to maintain the impartiality of the reviews and the reviewers' freedom to
write about the hospitality business. This recommendation is consistent with the findings
of previous analyses from related fields of study. For example, research on social media
has demonstrated that blogs for which participants are solicited by directive questioning
are less successful than blogs on which participants express themselves freely (Balagué
and De Valck, 2013).
Considering the high level of importance that guests attach to their freedom (Casaló et
al., 2015), we suggest that their decision to engage in writing reviews should not be
forced. Soliciting guests who do not spontaneously decide to write a review will trigger
their reaction. Consistent with the Theory of Psychological Reactance, in this study,
guests’ reactions are modeled as shown in Figure 1.
Please insert Figure 1 about here
10
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
The main model highlights that the reaction to the solicitation will depend on a guest’s
level of reactance proneness. Previous research has shown that influence attempts elicit
feelings of irritation toward the source of influence (Edwards et al., 2002). Moreover, the
magnitude of this attitudinal reaction is directly dependent on a person’s level of reactance
proneness (Marchand et al., 2015). In turn, the more intense the attitudinal reaction, the
stronger the behavioral reaction (i.e. the effort to restore the restricted freedom) (Brehm,
1989). Therefore, reactance proneness only indirectly influences the decision to write or
not to write a review through the mediating effect of irritation.
Hence, we hypothesize the following:
H1. Reactance proneness has a negative effect on the decision to write (or not to write) a
review, and this effect is fully mediated by irritation.
Our conceptual model highlights the additional impact of situational factors on the
attitudinal reaction. As suggested by recent studies (Gössling et al., 2016), guests may
receive an explicit solicitation to write a positive review rather than a general solicitation
to write one. In this case, the guest will perceive a stronger threat to her/his freedom
because the hospitality business attempts to influence not only the guest’s decision to
write a review but also the valence of the review.
11
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Moreover, when a person receives a recommendation that counters her/his previously
formed attitude, he/she will be likely to ignore the recommendation and will become
irritated with the source of the solicitation (e.g., Fitzsimons and Lehmann, 2004). This
phenomenon occurs because a counterattitudinal recommendation is perceived as a
stronger threat to personal freedom and thus elicits stronger reactance (Brehm and Brehm,
1981). At the time they received the solicitation, some of the guests may not have
developed the intention to write an online review. Therefore, since the level of irritation
is directly related to the strength of the threat (Edwards et al., 2002; Brehm and Brehm,
1981), we suggest the following:
H2a. A guest’s level of irritation (with the hospitality business that solicited the review)
will be higher in the case of an explicit solicitation to write a positive review than in the
case of a neutral solicitation to write a review; and
H2b. This effect will be higher among those guests who had not developed the intention
to write a review.
Methods
A questionnaire-based survey was conducted among a sample of Italian travelers.
Because it was not possible to identify in advance travelers who had been solicited by
hospitality businesses at least once to write online reviews, the sample for this study was
created according to the following procedure. We personally contacted bloggers who
12
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
belong to the Italian Association of Travel Bloggers, introducing them our research
project and asking for their collaboration to post a link to our online questionnaire on their
blogs. Three bloggers (“Vagabondo - La tana del viaggiatore indipendente”; “Mi prendo
e mi porto via”; “Fraintesa”) agreed to support our research and wrote posts on their blogs
inviting their followers to participate in a study about their attitudes toward online reviews
by clicking through the link to our questionnaires. The first of the three posts was
published in October 2015, and the last one was published at the beginning of January
2016. The entire data collection process ended in January 2016.
As a result of this procedure, we recruited 349 participants. In the posts and in the
introduction to the questionnaire, the participants were informed that the study intended
to gain a general understanding of travelers’ attitudes toward online reviews. All
participants were first asked several introductory questions about their experience with
travels, hotels and restaurants and about their attitudes and behavior related to online
reviews (such as review writing, reading and trusting). Then, the participants were asked
whether they had been solicited at least once by a restaurant and/or a hotel to write an
online review. Those who answered yes (185 people) represented the final sample used
in this study, whereas those who answered no (164 people) were presented with a different
questionnaire for the purpose of another study.
Five constructs were measured to test the hypotheses. First, each participant’s level of
reactance proneness was registered using three items from Dowd et al. (1991) on 7-point
13
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
agree-disagree scales: If I am told what to do, I often do the opposite; I am not very
tolerant of others’ attempts to persuade me; I resent people who try to tell me what to do.
The resulting scale showed a composite reliability value of 0.72 and a Cronbach’s alpha
value of 0.71, thus exceeding the suggested level of 0.70 (Bagozzi and Yi, 2012).
Then, each respondent was asked to think about the most recent solicitation she/he had
received from a hotel or from a restaurant and to answer questions regarding her/his
previous intention to write a review (yes or no), the valence of the received solicitation
(neutral solicitation or solicitation to write a positive review), and the behavioral reaction
(writing or not writing the review). Finally, consistent with previous research (Edwards
et al., 2002; Morimoto and Chang, 2006), each participant’s attitudinal reaction toward
the source of solicitation was measured through her/his level of irritation. Drawing on a
study by Edwards et al. (2002), the level of irritation was registered through an
individual’s level of agreement (on 7-point scales) with the following four items:
irritating; annoying; phony; intrusive. For this scale, both composite reliability and
Cronbach’s alpha had a value of 0.96, indicating that the internal consistency was met.
Questions regarding the respondents’ demographic information completed the
questionnaire.
To test the hypotheses, the following procedure was adopted. First, we used the structural
equation modeling technique to estimate the main model linking reactance proneness to
the behavioral reaction (writing or not writing the review) through irritation (H1). Then,
14
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
we examined the effects of the valence of solicitation (neutral or positive) and of previous
intention (yes or no) on the attitudinal reaction (irritation) using a two-way ANOVA (H2a
and H2b).
Results
Of the 349 people who participated in this study, 185 (53.0%) reported that at least once,
a hotel or a restaurant explicitly asked them to write a review on TripAdvisor, Google
Maps, or similar websites. Table 1 shows the profiles of the participants. People who
received a solicitation at least once were mainly aged 26-45, with a high level of education
and with average high frequencies of eating at restaurants and staying at hotels.
Please insert Table 1 about here
Of the 185 respondents who experienced review solicitations, the vast majority received
such solicitations several times (Table 2). Considering that 53% of the participants
reported having been solicited at least once by a hotel or a restaurant and that most of
them were solicited several times, review solicitation emerges as a popular practice in the
hospitality industry.
Participants were solicited more frequently by hotels than by restaurants; 74.6% of the
participants were personally invited to write a review at the end of their dinner or their
15
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
stay. E-mail solicitations were less popular. Only a few people reported other ways of
receiving invitations, such as being given a business card with a list of review sites and a
request to write a review or being shown a poster promising a free breakfast for those
who wrote a review for the business. In a few cases, the solicitations were accompanied
by incentives, including gifts (bottles of wine, t-shirts, free breakfasts) and monetary
discounts.
Please insert Table 2 about here
Participants were then asked to refer to the most recently received solicitation. Thinking
of their experience at the hotel or restaurant at which they received the most recent
solicitation, respondents reported a medium-high level of satisfaction (3.90 on a 5-point
Likert scale, with extremes of very unsatisfied – very satisfied). Of the participants, 62.2%
received the solicitation from a hotel, and 37.8% received the solicitation from a
restaurant. Moreover, 20.5% of them were explicitly asked to write a positive review,
whereas the remaining 79.5% received a neutral solicitation to write a review for the
business. Table 3 summarizes the respondents’ behavioral and attitudinal reactions to the
solicitation. Only 19 participants reported that they had no previous intention of writing
a review but decided to write it after the invitation.
16
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Please insert Table 3 about here
The first hypothesis suggested that reactance proneness has a negative effect on the
intention to write a review and that this effect is mediated by irritation. The results of the
structural model estimation (see Figure 2) showed good model fit. In detail, χ2 was 38.33
with df = 18. The value of χ2/df was 2.13, below the threshold of three (Kline, 2011). CFI
and GFI were 0.98 and 0.95, respectively, and above the recommended cutoff of 0.93
(Bagozzi and Yi, 2012). Finally, the RMSEA was 0.07 (pclose > 0.05) and SRMR was
0.03, within the threshold of 0.07 (Bagozzi and Yi, 2012).
Please insert Figure 2 about here
With regard to the structural effects, the findings support hypothesis 1, which stated that
reactance proneness has a negative effect on the decision to write (or not to write) a review
and that this effect is mediated by irritation. In detail, reactance proneness has a direct
effect on irritation (β = 0.443, p < 0.01), and irritation has a direct effect on the decision
to write a review (β = -0.438, p < 0.01). In addition, reactance proneness has no direct
impact on the decision to write a review. Hence, hypothesis 1 is supported.
Hypotheses H2a and H2b were tested via a two-way ANOVA with irritation as the
dependent factor and valence of solicitation (neutral or positive) and previous intention
17
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
to write (yes or no) as the independent factors. The results of the analysis (table 4) show
that the valence of solicitation has a significant effect (F=28.665, p < 0.01), which means
that guests experience higher irritation when they are asked to write a positive review
than in the case of a neutral solicitation to write a review. Therefore, H2a is supported.
On the contrary, the findings reveal that the 2-way interaction effect is not significant
(F=1.728, p >0.10), showing that the level of irritation of guests who receive an explicit
solicitation to write a positive review is the same regardless of the previous intention to
write the review. Hence, H2b is not supported.
Please insert Table 4 about here
Discussion
Theoretical implications
The findings of this study enrich previous analyses that have suggested that hospitality
managers should solicit online reviews from their guests (e.g., Levy et al., 2013; Sparks
et al., 2013; Baka, 2016) but have not measured the output of this marketing strategy. Our
results show mixed effectiveness for review solicitation. More precisely, the results
indicate that a minor, but not unimportant, share of solicited guests without the previous
intention to write a review decide to comply with the solicitation. At the same time, the
collected evidence shows relevant negative attitudinal effects on a large portion of guests.
18
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Therefore, soliciting reviews increases the number of reviews for the business but at the
expense of irritating a significant share of guests. This irritation may also have negative
effects on guests’ loyalty toward the hotel or the restaurant and on their offline word-ofmouth.
These results corroborate recent research by Casaló et al. (2015) that encourages
hospitality businesses to preserve the impartiality of reviews and reviewers' freedom to
write about the hospitality business. In particular, our research highlights that guests react
particularly negatively to managers’ attempts to bias guests’ comments by suggesting that
they write positive reviews for their business. Moreover, the results reinforce available
findings about eWOM, suggesting that hospitality managers should act on the emotional
bonds with guests to generate eWOM and underlining that guests are likely to engage in
eWOM if the business is perceived to hold self-relevant values (Kim et al., 2015).
In addition, this research extends available knowledge on online review management
(Schuckert et al., 2015) and manipulation strategies (Gössling et al., 2016). The collected
evidence both demonstrates that the online review solicitation strategy is already very
popular and provides details about current practices, such as the various ways used to
solicit guests.
Finally, from a broader perspective, the results of this analysis provide evidence to fill the
relevant gap highlighted by recent studies (e.g., Baka, 2016) about eWOM and reputation
19
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
management in hospitality. Soliciting reviews is a suitable approach available to
hospitality businesses to implement their eWOM and reputation strategies.
Managerial implications
Given the increasing impact of online reputation on guests’ behavior, several hospitality
managers have chosen to solicit online reviews from their guests. This study identifies
both the benefits and the drawbacks of this strategy. Active review solicitation has the
potential to increase the number of reviews for a business. At the same time, this practice
irritates a significant share of guests. Given that attitudes are antecedents of behaviors,
we may anticipate that some of these customers may defect. Therefore, managers should
be aware that soliciting their guests increases the number of reviews but also causes
disaffection among a relevant share of their guests. Above all, managers should avoid
explicitly asking their guests to write positive reviews. Instead, they could build an
emotional bond with their guests because a strong emotional relationship is a predictor of
guests’ intention to spontaneously engage in eWOM.
At a higher level, hospitality businesses should first design an overall strategy for
managing their reputation and then select the marketing activities through which that
strategy should be implemented (for a detailed overview of the process of reputation
management in the hospitality industry, managers may refer to the model proposed by
Baka (2016)). Therefore, when opting for review solicitations, hospitality businesses
20
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
should ensure that this activity is consistent with the overall reputation objectives and
strategies of the firm.
Conclusion
Encouraged by the need to actively manage their online reputation, hospitality businesses
are experimenting with new strategies. In particular, recent research has documented that
soliciting guests to write online reviews is becoming increasingly popular. This study has
provided evidence about the effectiveness of this strategy, highlighting both advantages
and drawbacks. Specifically, soliciting guests increases the number of reviews but also
irritates a significant share of the solicited guests. Future studies may adopt a longitudinal
perspective to understand whether these irritated guests are likely to defect.
Several limitations should be considered when interpreting the results of this research;
these limitations suggest the need for future investigations in this field. First, because this
was the first study to empirically evaluate the phenomenon of review solicitations, it was
not possible to make comparisons. Conducting similar research in other countries could
strengthen our knowledge in this field. Moreover, we did not explore guests’
characteristics that may explain, at least in part, their attitudinal and behavioral reactions
to solicitations. The attempt to fill this gap creates a variety of research opportunities.
Finally, this study was based on an analysis of the real previous experiences of guests,
21
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
emphasizing the practical relevance of results. Future research may adopt experimental
designs to carefully evaluate guests’ reactions to different solicitation techniques.
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26
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Table 1. Profiles of the participants
Dimension
Items
Gender
F
M
<25
26-35
36-45
46-55
56-65
>65
Less than high school
High school degree
University degree
(bachelor and/or
master degree)
Postgraduate degree
Student
Employed
Self-employed
Unemployed
Others
Less than once a
month
Age
Education
Occupation
Average
frequency of
eating at
restaurants (either
for leisure or
business)
1-2 times per month
3-4 times per month
5-10 times per month
More than 10 times per
month
27
Frequencies
(all
participants,
n=349)
197 (56.4%)
152 (43.6%)
90 (25.8%)
118 (33.8%)
94 (26.9%)
37 (10.6%)
8 (2.3%)
2 (0.6%)
3 (0.9%)
80 (22.9%)
209 (59.9%)
Frequencies
(only participants
who received
solicitations, n=185)
107 (57.8%)
78 (42.2%)
39 (21.1%)
71 (38.4%)
52 (28.1%)
21 (11.3%)
2 (1.1%)
0 (0%)
2 (1.1%)
38 (20.5%)
115 (62.2%)
57 (16.3%)
89 (25.5%)
159 (45.5%)
83 (23.8%)
16 (4.6%)
2 (0.6%)
13 (3.7%)
30 (16.2%)
39 (21.1%)
84 (45.4%)
50 (27.0%)
12 (6.5%)
0 (0%)
2 (1.1%)
108 (31.0%)
113 (32.4%)
81 (23.2%)
34 (9.7%)
48 (25.9%)
61 (33.0%)
49 (26.5%)
25 (13.5%)
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Average
frequency of
staying at hotels
(either for leisure
or business)
Less than once a year
5 (1.4%)
1 (0.5%)
Once a year
2-5 times per year
6-10 times per year
>10 times per year
66 (18.9%)
179 (51.3%)
47 (13.5%)
52 (14.9%)
17 (9.2%)
96 (51.9%)
33 (17.9%)
38 (20.5%)
28
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Table 2. Descriptive statistics about participants’ experiences with review
solicitation (n=185)
Questions
How frequently have you received
such invitations?
Items
Just once
Several times
Many times
Did you receive these invitations
Only from hotels
More from hotels than from
restaurants
More from restaurants than
from hotels
Only from restaurants
Were you (mostly) invited
Through one or more
solicitation e-mails
Personally at the end of your
stay / dinner
In other ways (please specify)
Were these invitations accompanied No
by any form of incentive (small
gifts, discounts, etc.)?
Yes (please specify)
29
Frequencies
31 (16.8%)
143 (77.2%)
11 (6.0%)
82 (44.3%)
37 (20.0%)
50 (27.0%)
16 (8.7%)
42 (22.7%)
138 (74.6%)
5 (2.7%)
177 (95.7%)
8 (4.3%)
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Table 3. Reaction to the solicitation to write a review
Behavioral reaction to the
solicitation
Wrote the
Did not write
review
the review
(n=106)
(n=79)
Intention to
write the
review
before the
solicitation
a
Yes
(n=87)
n=87
(2.96)a
n=0
No
(n=98)
n=19
(2.61)a
n=79
(4.55)a
Values of irritation between parentheses
30
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Table 4. Results of the two-way ANOVA
Variables
Sum of squares
F
P
Valence of solicitation
84.707
28.665
<0.01
Previous intention to write
53.246
18.019
<0.01
Valence of solicitation * Previous intention
5.107
1.728
>0.10
to write
31
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Figure 1. The conceptual model
Main model
Reactance
proneness
Irritation
(attitudinal reaction)
Situational factors
Valence of the solicitation (neutral / positive)
X
Previous intention to write a review (yes / no)
32
Writing / not writing
a review
(behavioral reaction)
Magno, F., Cassia, F., Bruni A. (2017). “Please write a (great) online review for my hotel!” Guests’
reactions to solicited reviews. Journal of Vacation Marketing. DOI: 10.1177/1356766717690574.
This is a post-print version. The publisher’s version in available at the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1356766717690574
Figure 2. The estimation of the structural model
33