Reactivity without legitimacy? Online consumer reviews in the restaurant industry

ABSTRACT

In recent years, web sites where individual consumers can rate and review goods and services have mushroomed all over the Internet. Restaurants are particularly affected by online reviewing. If the impact of online consumer reviews (OCRs) on the demand side of markets is now well understood and measured, few studies examine the reception of this new evaluation method by those who are assessed. Based on interviews with French restaurant managers, our research shows that OCRs systems reconfigure relations of accountability in the restaurant industry. We use the notion of reactivity to describe the mechanisms through which the new evaluation system transforms the activity of restaurants. We also examine the affects surrounding the reception of ratings and reviews by restaurant managers and the moral criteria that accompany their discourses on online reviews. Many restaurants consider online reviews as a brutal and hypocritical mode of judgment. The judgment produced by online ratings and reviews is not easily borne by restaurant managers, because it challenges the conventions of quality they had previously internalized as legitimate, that is, those produced by professional experts. We interpret this ambivalent reception as the unfinished movement of transforming a performative reputation device into a legitimate evaluation institution.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluation
• reviews
• online consumer reviews
• reactivity
• restaurant industry

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful for the insightful comments and suggestions made by the two anonymous reviewers of our paper. Usual caveats apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Dellarocas et al. (2010) investigate the consumers’ propensity to contribute online reviews for different products of the same category (motion pictures). They show that moviegoers appear to be more likely to contribute reviews for very obscure movies but also for very high-grossing movies. This explains why the distribution of reviews on products (depending on their popularity) has a U-shaped curve.

2. As part of a broader research program on the impact of online consumer reviews (see Beauvisage et al., 2013; Mellet et al., 2014), we also rely upon primary interviews with managers of OCR websites; web data, and secondary analysis of the trade press and market studies produced by the industry between 2011 and 2014.

3. In 2012, there were around 71,000 restaurants in France; 84% of them employed between 0 and 5 people (Xerfi, 2014).

4. All websites do not provide the opportunity for businesses to respond to consumer reviews. This is the case of linternaute.com, contacted by this restaurateur.

5. e.g. http://www.lhotellerie-restauration.fr/journal/gestion-marketing/2013-01/Dix-astuces-pour-inciter-les-clients-a-deposer-des-avis-en-ligne.htm for the French case. See also the (American) National Restaurant Association (NRA): http://www.restaurant.org/Manage-My-Restaurant/Marketing-Sales/Brand-Management/How-to-Monitor-Your-Restaurant%E2%80%99s-Online-Reviews