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Purpose: Engaging in webcare, i.e. responding to online reviews, can positively affect consumer attitudes, intentions and behavior. Research is often scarce or inconsistent regarding the effects of specific webcare strategies on business performance. Therefore, this study tests whether and how several webcare strategies affect hotel bookings. Design/methodology/approach: We apply machine learning classifiers to secondary data (webcare messages) to classify webcare variables to be included in a regression analysis looking at the effect of these strategies on hotel bookings while controlling for possible confounds such as seasonality and hotel-specific effects. Findings: The strategies that have a positive effect on bookings are directing reviewers to a private channel, being defensive, offering compensation and having managers sign the response. Webcare strategies to be avoided are apologies, merely asking for more information, inviting customers for another visit and adding informal non-verbal cues. Strategies that do not appear to affect future bookings are expressing gratitude, personalizing and having staff members (rather than managers) sign webcare. Practical implications: These findings help managers optimize their webcare strategy for better business results and develop automated webcare. Originality/value: We look into several commonly used and studied webcare strategies that affect actual business outcomes, being that most previous research studies are experimental or look into a very limited set of strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the negative electronic word of mouth (NeWOM) under the live streaming platform, the paper aims to explore the mechanism of proactive and reactive webcare on customer brand loyalty. We constructed three separate experiments with no webcare, proactive webcare, and reactive webcare in response to NeWOM during the live streaming platform. In this study, 210 valid questionnaires were collected for statistical analysis, including the Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson correlation analysis. Our findings reveal that proactive and reactive webcare positively influence cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement, with proactive webcare demonstrating greater effectiveness. We confirm a positive correlation between these forms of engagement and brand loyalty, highlighting the strong connection between behavioral engagement and brand loyalty. At the same time, this study provides crucial inspiration for the live-streaming platform managers to focus on providing proactive webcare and develop behavioral activities in live-steaming platforms to enhance customers’ brand loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing negative reviews by posting online responses called webcare is a growing trend among marketers. However, no research exists to date that measures the quality of these marketer-generated responses. This article addresses this shortcoming by conceptualising a construct called webcare quality and developing a scale that measures it. Five studies are conducted which results in a 37-item scale comprising of nine dimensions, namely, immediacy, ownership, comprehensiveness, civility, assurance, coherence, retention, personalisation and elaborateness. Academically, this research adds to the existing body of knowledge on service recovery strategies, webcare and online complaint management processes. Practically, this scale plays an important role in understanding how complaining consumers evaluate the quality of managerial responses. If favourably evaluated, transgressing firms may win back previously dissatisfied and unhappy customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management of online reviews holds strategic significance for brands, especially in the hospitality sector, as more and more prospective consumers read reviews for brand evaluation and brand engagement. Contrary to most studies that examine the effects of webcare among reviewers, this study examines the effects of webcare on consumer brand engagement among review readers. Further, rather than focusing on a single review or a management response to a single review, it focuses on the perceived webcare efforts of a firm as a response to multiple reviews taken together by introducing a new concept, webcare salience, defined as the degree to which webcare is seen in a review set by the review readers or observers. Through a series of experiments in the tourism context, it examines underexplored effects of webcare salience on consumer brand engagement and, particularly, how other webcare variables, namely webcare valence, conversational human voice and response time, moderate such effects. This research triggers a new line of scholarly enquiry that takes into account the idea of review set and review readers' perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and reputation are crucial in the online buying marketplace, because negative WOM can easily spread very quickly. Businesses are investing a lot in consolidating customer relationships in order to improve their services and eliminate negative eWOM. So far, many studies have been carried out on the issue of eWOM, with some scholars proposing the concept of Webcare to analyze how businesses operate and conduct eWOM. In fact, it is hard to provide service recovery for many online companies, because service failure cannot be made up immediately and efficiently. And there are few studies do empirically address the issue of Webcare in the online buying context. In this vein, following "A post-acceptance of IS continuance model" originated from Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT), this present study proposed a research model of "A post-acceptance of service recovery continuance model" in the research context of service recovery. The findings showed that "Post-acceptance of IS continuance model" can be applied into the context of service recovery with a highly explanatory power. The study confirmed the antecedent role of Webcare in the "Post-acceptance of service recovery continuance (repurchase) model", and found that the Webcare should be employed in all of the online buying process as the trigger of service recovery sequence to satisfied consumers, instead of post remedy after the service failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has focused on message characteristics of public webcare conversations. However, webcare conversations are increasingly held on private social networking sites. Little is known to what extent organizations and stakeholders adapt their messages to the affordances of these channels. Employing the uses and gratifications theory, this paper reports on a content analysis of webcare conversations (n = 423) between stakeholders and the Netherlands Red Cross on public and private social networking sites. The stakeholder motives and organizational communication style were analyzed. The findings reveal private channels mainly serve the purpose of customer service: stakeholders approach the organization with questions; the organization uses message personalization to enhance the experience of one-to-one communication. Public social networking sites mainly serve the purpose of reputation management: stakeholders post remarks and compliments; the organization adapts the communication style of its messages to the affordances of the individual platform. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The study (N = 879) investigated underlying mechanisms of the effects of brand feedback (a business' written response) to negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM) messages (e.g., online product reviews) using the theoretical framework of the attribution theory. Findings suggest that brand feedback can positively (via an indirect route) as well as negatively (via a direct route) affect prospective consumers' purchase intentions. Brand feedback positively affects purchase intentions in part through a reduction in consumers' perceptions of the brand's volitional control over the problem (controllability) and long-lasting nature (stability) of the cause of the problem described in a negative eWOM. Brand trust also partially mediates these indirect positive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Erciyes Akademi is the property of Erciyes Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the quest for resolving customer complaints and attracting customers for online transactions, service providers have developed online response mechanisms. This mechanism generically termed as 'webcare'. Despite widespread adoption of webcare by marketers, there is minimal understanding of its conceptualisation and measurement in the customer-centric perspective. One of the primary reasons for this is the lack of a psychometric scale that measures webcare efforts as perceived by customers. Thus, we formally define and develop a psychometric instrument that measures 'webcare' efforts of the marketers. Accordingly, we conceptualised and validated a three dimensional, 14-item psychometric tool measuring Consumers' Perceived Webcare (CPW). From an academic perspective, the scale can contribute towards advancement in marketing and online service recovery literature. From a practitioner's perspective, the study will help managers to efficiently manage the process of designing and executing online response strategies while trying to resolve customer complaints and attract customers online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a novel framework for examining how emotional labor is performed linguistically. Bringing together Arlie Hochschild's pioneering sociological work and insights from the linguistic literature on emotion, the framework aims to capture the discursive mechanisms through which workers express, background and manage emotions in fulfilling their professional roles. We demonstrate the framework through a case study of a corpus of Twitter interactions involving passengers and airline customer service agents during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Following recent calls for triangulation in corpus linguistics, we explore the corpus using three complementary methods: lexical, move and dialogic analysis. From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to improving our understanding of the pervasive phenomenon of emotional labor. From an applied perspective, it offers a new approach for assessing communication practices in various professional contexts. • We present a novel framework for examining how emotional labor is performed linguistically. • We apply the framework to a corpus of Twitter exchanges between passengers and airline agents during the Covid-19 pandemic. • We showcase an innovative blend of corpus analysis techniques to triangulate findings and a new method for dialogic analysis. • The analysis uncovers the emotive linguistic resources and rhetorical moves typically used in webcare discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the online spread of non-standard Dutch in an unexplored communicative setting, i.e. complaint management on corporate Facebook pages. Based on a self-compiled corpus of consumer-company interactions taken from 6 corporate Facebook pages, we investigate to what extent typical features of informal social media communication spill over into more sensitive contexts of complaint management. We do so by mapping the presence and frequency of 27 Flemish old vernacular and 13 new vernacular features (cf. Androutsopoulos 2011) in consumer-initiated posts, company replies and consumer-to-consumer interactions. The results show that some, though not all, new vernacular features occur relatively frequently in both consumer and company messages. Consumers predominantly use new vernacular features for expressive compensation, while companies appear to incorporate them in their webcare (especially emoji and English insertions) as functional operationalisations of conversational human voice (Kelleher 2009) and to support their desired brand identity. In contrast, old vernacular features rarely occur in the dataset. This suggests a different status of old and new vernacular features, where the former are deemed less appropriate or more limited in terms of functionality in this communicative setting. Despite the often informal register of the consumer messages, Standard Dutch still seems the preferred or safer option for company-addressed posts while companies, too, cling to Standard Dutch as the benchmark for professional written communication in this online context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Aims: Providers face a paradox between professional conduct and reputation management when they respond to patients' online reviews. This article aims to establish when and how health professionals respond to patients' online reviews, and how these reviews differ compared to other, non-medical, industries, such as driving schools and jewellery stores. Methods: Predictors of providers' responses to 180 patient reviews on NHS Choices were identified and compared against the predictors of responses to 180 customer reviews by non-medical providers. Results: Responses to patients' online reviews could be significantly predicted by the number of patient reviews received on NHS Choices and the providers' response routines, but not by characteristics of the patients' reviews. The non-medical providers, on the other hand, were responsive to characteristics of the online reviews and particularly the rating stars allocated to the provider. Conclusions: Responses to reviews seem to be a distinctive way of 'responding without reacting'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Webcare via public and private social media. A corpus study on the effect of Conversational Human Voice in the PT sector This study investigates the use of Conversational Human Voice (CHV) by a Dutch Public Transport (PT) operator in reactive webcare conversations with travelers on private and public social media channels and the effect of this use on the traveler's sentiment during the conversation. In this study, CHV is unraveled into eight aspects. 244 conversations were analyzed, selected from the PT-operator's public and private social media channels. Messages sent by the PT companies were coded for CHV; messages of travelers were coded for sentiment. The aspects organization responds as an individual and informal language were used the most often by the PT operator. Use of CHV is similar on private social networks and public social networks, with the exception of organization responds as an individual (used more on private social networks) and language to compensate the lack of non-verbal communication (used more on public social networks). Furthermore, results show that the use of sympathy has a positive effect on the traveler's sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the effects of two important observational cues (perceived failure severity and review agreement) that the potential customers use to form various service based evaluations while comprehending online hotel reviews specifically relating to service failures. Further, the study examined the conditional effect of marketer initiated recovery interventions (webcare) aimed at ameliorating perceived service failure severity towards the hotel service. Data collected through a between-subject experimental design showed that reader's perception of high failure severity and review agreement on the same could adversely impact the attitude towards the hotel and diminish patronage intention towards such hotel. Our research suggests this adverse effect could be mitigated by deploying varying webcare strategies. Specifically, our study points that, for varying levels of perceived failure severity and review agreement, different webcare strategies are to be deployed so as to engender favorable outcomes such as enhanced attitude and patronage intentions. Our study also found that the use of varying webcare to generate favorable outcomes is mediated by justice perceptions. Based on study results, we draw implications for effective online customer care management, especially in the case of hotel services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managers increasingly address client feedback online, a practice known as webcare. Based on a systematic literature review on webcare, we provide a framework that aims to identify potential generalizations, discuss possible explanations for inconsistencies that require further investigation, and identify the under-researched areas concerning the managerial responses to eWOM (electronic Word-of-Mouth). This framework covers several practical and theoretical questions. Our systematic review suggests that organizations should respond to eWOM, especially when it is negative, and should do so in a personalized, detailed, and timely manner. Accommodative webcare should go beyond a mere apology and should focus on solving the issue. We integrate these results from prior research with insights from justice theory, attribution theory, message personalization, and service recovery to develop an extensive conceptual framework describing the factors to consider when engaging in webcare and the potential outcomes. This framework guides our suggestions for future research that should disentangle the many contradictory effects (e.g., when to use defensive webcare) and cover under-researched topics (e.g., webcare strategies for positive WOM specifically or the underlying mechanisms explaining the effects of different webcare strategies), and the mechanisms through which webcare strategies lead to better business performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative reviews written by unsatisfied consumers can significantly erode the image of a brand. Therefore, marketers regularly respond to these reviews through written messages posted on online channels: a practice known as webcare. The present article seeks to explore whether selected webcare attributes, such as strength, sidedness, and ownership, have any effects on consumers’ forgiveness of the service failures caused by transgressing firms. Furthermore, the effects of consumer forgiveness on satisfaction with webcare, brand attitudes, and purchase intentions are also investigated. The article examines these relationships in the context of a fine dining restaurant (Study 1) and a hotel (Study 2). The results reveal that webcare attributes play a salient role in achieving consumer forgiveness. Furthermore, the studies also reveal that consumer forgiveness leads to satisfaction with webcare and improved brand attitudes and purchase intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides evidence of how marketers should respond to a sudden discharge of negative word-of-mouth (nWOM) communication that spreads rapidly across social media platforms, known as an online “firestorm.” The study aimed to determine whether a company’s response policy during an online firestorm influenced their brand reputation among observers of the firestorm. An experiment offered three different company approaches to the firestorm. The study used a conclusive quantitative design by manipulating independent variables in a controlled environment in order to infer causality through an online survey to 300 participants. The study shows that when faced with the option of replying to a cluster of complaints or each individual complaint, a more positive brand reputation is engendered through individual replies. While research in digital marketing has progressed to provide companies with strategies to use digital platforms as a marketing tool, the negative side of social media—in this case online firestorms—is still largely left unattended. Addressing the direct issue of how to respond to online firestorms is therefore of significant relevance to marketing practitioners and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

@Organisation in complaint tweets as a trigger for webcare interactions An organization’s webcare is aimed at dealing with as many consumer complaints as possible. The question is what features of negative word-of-mouth tweets lead to more webcare response. From a pragmalinguistic perspective, we started with a brief overview of the speech act of complaining, and its illocutionary force which is communicated directly or indirectly. In two corpus analyses (with 6533 and 1479 negative word-of-mouth tweets), we examined the relations between the way consumers address an organization (operationalized as the position of @Organization in the negative word-of-mouth tweet) and the amount of webcare interaction between the organization and consumers. The results show that when a consumer places the addressed @Organization at the beginning of the tweet, this leads to a webcare-response more frequently than when @Organization occurs elsewhere in the tweet. In the second corpus analysis, the communicative function of @Organization (direct or indirect address) was included in the analysis. When @Organization was addressed directly, this resulted in more webcare interaction than when the organization was addressed indirectly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Annoying that the bike hasn’t been removed! Can you give me a case number? ^EK”: Conversational Human Voice in webcare of Dutch municipalities The conversational communication style organisations use in webcare is an important factor affecting its success, and is referred to as the Conversational Human Voice (CHV, Kelleher, 2009; Kelleher & Miller, 2006). This communication style reflects attributes such as treating others as humans, using a personal communication style, and being open to dialogue. Although several experimental studies investigated the relation between conversational linguistic elements in webcare messages and perceived CHV (for example Crijns, Cauberghe, Hudders & Claeys, 2017; Huibers & Verhoeven, 2014), there are considerable differences in the type and number of linguistic elements they used. Therefore we developed an instrument based on scientific research to identify conversational linguistic elements reliably. Next, we investigated how often these elements occurred in a corpus of 480 webcare conversations between twenty Dutch municipalities and their citizens, and to what extent they differ in its usage. The results showed that the identification instrument was reliable. Furthermore, municipalities often personalize their webcare responses, but hardly use informal language and invitational rhetoric. Large municipalities, such as Amsterdam and ’s-Hertogenbosch, appeared to be more progressive in applying conversational elements in webcare than medium-sized municipalities, such as Gouda and Deventer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A linguistic analysis of the concept CHV The concept of conversational human voice (CHV) was introduced in 2006 by Kelleher and Miller indicating a personal, conversational style in online organizational communication. The CHV measurement scale they presented consists of eleven items, like ‘the brand treats me and others as human beings’ and ‘tries to be interesting in communication’. Various studies showed positive effects of this style on organizational outcomes. In this paper we examine the clearness of the notion of CHV. First, we tried to identify for each strategy specific linguistic characteristics as found in the literature on conversations and computer mediated communication. We succeeded for only eight of the eleven strategies. For example, ‘tries to be interesting’ is not directly translatable in linguistics characteristics. Next, we coded the linguistic characteristics in a corpus of 540 webcare interactions. The coding showed that the remaining eight strategies were partly overlapping, and were lacking some essential characteristics of organizational conversational style as well. We conclude that the current operationalization is not sufficient in capturing CHV: On the one hand it is too restrictive because CHV seems to be more than the eleven strategies; on the other hand it is too broad, because relations cannot be determined unambiguously between these strategies and linguistic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing scholars and practitioners have long recognized that the power of electronic negative word-of-mouth (e-NWOM) can influence brand revenues and firm performance, but most previous studies have only examined the effect of viewing. This study is one of the initial attempts to test the effects of e-NWOM on both posters and viewers. We also test the moderating effects of company usefulness and company apology in a separate study. Using an observational dataset that contains NWOM viewing and posting records and customers' purchase transactions from a real company, Study 1 finds that viewing e-NWOM has a negative effect on subsequent purchases, whereas posting e-NWOM has a positive interaction effect with company usefulness. Study 2 shows that a company's public apology has a positive effect on viewers, but not posters. We conclude with the theoretical, methodological, and managerial implications of e-NWOM and webcare research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Intensifying new vernacular affects perceived conversational human voice. • Intensifying new vernacular affects interactional justice and corporate credibility. • No negative effect of non-intensifying new vernacular vs. (informal) Standard Dutch. • Partial mediation of appropriateness, value of Language Expectancy and Role Theory. • Some deviation from formal written Standard Dutch acceptable in Facebook webcare. We investigate how intensifying (e.g. deliberate repetition of punctuation symbols) and non-intensifying (e.g. emoji or chatspeak abbreviations) new vernacular features in responses to consumer complaints on corporate Facebook pages influence perceptions of conversational human voice, interactional justice and corporate credibility, and whether company type and new vernacular usage in the complaint itself moderate these effects. We carried out a 3 (new vernacular features in response: absent, intensifying, non-intensifying) × 2 (new vernacular features in complaint: absent, present) × 2 (company type: progressive, traditional) between-subjects experiment with 718 Flemish consumers. Findings show that organisational responses containing non-intensifying features generate equally positive ratings as those without new vernacular. This points towards an extended norm of appropriate language use in webcare, i.e. adherence to (somewhat informal) Standard Dutch, but with some room for non-intensifying new vernacular. Intensifying expressive compensation strategies, however, negatively impacted conversational human voice, interactional justice and corporate credibility perceptions. The effect on the latter two is mediated to a certain extent by the perceived appropriateness of these features, highlighting the importance of Language Expectancy Theory and Role Theory as underlying frameworks in this field. No clear moderation of company type or new vernacular usage in the consumer complaint was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap is the property of Amsterdam University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)