Navigating the online reputation maze: impact of review availability and heuristic cues on restaurant influencer marketing effectiveness

ABSTRACT

Restaurants can engage and attract social media users by showcasing their food or services through influencer marketing campaigns. However, the influencers and restaurant companies need to understand the underlying mechanism for presenting online reviews to attract customers to restaurants better. This study applies the theory of judgment heuristics and develops a conceptual model to test the effects of review availability (present vs. absent) and heuristic cues (scarcity, vividness, and frequency) on followers’ perceptions and behavioral intention. Two experiments were conducted. Results showed that the scarcity cue moderates the mediation effect of informativeness between review availability and visit intention. The study also found that instead of being cognitive “misers”, consumers use multiple cues to assist their purchase decisions. The findings provide restaurant companies and food influencers with meaningful insights that they can employ to craft effective social media content.

餐厅可以通过组织网红参与的营销活动展示其美食或服务来吸引社交媒体用户的关注。因此,网红和餐厅需要理解在线评论呈现的潜在机制,才能更好地吸引顾客光临餐厅。本研究应用判断启发理论,构建了一个研究模型,以测试评论可用性(存在与缺失)和启发性线索(稀缺性、生动性和频率)对消费者知觉和行为意图的影响。本研究包含了两个实验。结果显示,稀缺性线索调节了信息性在评论可用性和光临意图之间的中介效应。研究还发现,消费者在购买决策中使用多个线索,而非仅仅是认知上的“节省者”。研究结果为餐厅公司和餐饮网红提供了有意义的洞见,可用来制作有效的社交媒体内容。

KEYWORDS:

• heuristic
• review availability
• Instagram
• scarcity
• vividness
• frequency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia through grant number FRGS/1/2018/SS01/UITM/02/21, by the National Natural Science Funds of China (72102032), and by the “Young Talent Research Grant” of Beijing International Studies University (Grant No. 21111000006)