From reactivity to reputation management: online consumer review systems in the restaurant industry

The rapid growth of online consumer review (OCR) systems such as Tripadvisor has greatly reconfigured the operating environment for numerous businesses and organizations. As OCRs become a crucial source of information for consumer decision-making, we pose a twofold question: how do restaurants perceive OCRs and how do they respond to being evaluated on them? In answering this question, we distinguish between different types of organizational responses: staff management, goal setting, operational practices and reputation management. We base our study on in-depth interviews with mid-price restaurants in Amsterdam. Our findings show that reactivity related to staff management, goal setting and operational practices is limited and highly deliberate. Instead, reputational responses are more extensive. That is, restaurants respond to and even appropriate OCRs in order to promote themselves, to signal professionalism, and to limit the reputational damage of negative reviews. On the basis of these findings, we argue that more attention be paid to the agency of evaluated entities and that OCR systems be theorized more as a multisided platform with a hybrid functionality of both valuation and marketing.