Eun-Kyong (Cindy) Choi

With the growth of internet technology, customers are sharing up their experiences. Hence, these types of customer experiences are spreading rapidly as a source of online reviews. For this reason, online reviews have become a critical source of information that influences customers’ purchase intentions and behavior. Thus, businesses should monitor online reviews to understand the customer experience and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. This study attempts to identify essential characteristics for positive online reviews of wine bars and examine the structural relationships of these attributes. To accomplish this purpose, a total of 1,337 online reviews were collected from Google Travel and analyzed. The frequency analysis was performed using text mining to determine the most frequently referred to attributes, and the semantic network analysis, factor analysis, and regression analysis were conducted to understand customer experience and satisfaction of wine bars located in Busan, South Korea. The results show that the top 50 keywords identified from the online reviews were categorized as four groups—‘Atmosphere’, ‘Service’, ‘Date and Location’, and ‘Menu’. The results of the factor analysis reduced the original dimension of 48 keywords to 16 keywords and classified them into six factors, namely, ‘Service’, ‘Staff’, ‘Menu’, ‘Environment’, ‘Recommendation’ and ‘Atmosphere’. Based on these results, implications for sustainable wine bar marketing strategies were suggested.

Festivals are experiential products heavily depending on the recommendations of previous visitors. With the power of social media growing, understanding the antecedents of positive electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intentions of festival attendees is immensely beneficial for festival organizers to better promote their festivals and control negative publicity. However, there is still limited research regarding eWOM intentions in the festival context. Thus, this study aims to fill such a gap by investigating the relationships among festival attendees’ enjoyment seeking motivation, perceived value, visitor satisfaction, and eWOM intention in a local festival setting. Additionally, the moderating role of gender was tested as it is one of the most important demographic variables to show individual differences in behavioral intentions. The results of structural equation modeling showed a positive effect of enjoyment seeking motivation on perceived value, visitor satisfaction, and eWOM intention. Moreover, gender differences in eWOM intention and a full mediating effect of visitor satisfaction between perceived value and eWOM intention for female respondents were revealed. The findings of this study extend the existing festival literature and provide insights for strategically organizing and promoting festivals to generate more positive eWOM which can be utilized as an effective marketing tool and a feedback channel.

With the development of social media, customers are sharing their experiences, and it is rapidly spreading as a form of online review. That is why the online review has become a significant information source affecting customers’ purchase intention and behavior. Therefore, it is important to understand the customer’s experience shown in the online review in order to maintain sustainable customer satisfaction and loyalty. The purpose of this study is to investigate what are the key attributes and the structural relationship of those key attributes. To accomplish this purpose, a total of 6596 hotel reviews were collected from Google (google.com). A frequency analysis using text mining was performed to figure out the most frequently mentioned attributes. In addition, semantic network analysis, factor analysis, and regression analysis were applied to understand the experience and satisfaction of the hotel customer. As a result, the top 99 keywords were divided into four groups such as “Intangible Service”, “Physical Environment”, “Purpose”, and “Location”. The factor analysis reduced the dimension of the original 64 keywords to 22 keywords, and grouped them into five factors, which are “Access”, “F&B (Food and Beverage)”, “Purpose”, “Tangibles”, and “Empathy”. Based on these results, theoretical and practical implications for sustainable hotel marketing strategies are suggested.

Because of their cultural and financial contributions to their host institutions and communities, higher education has recruited more international students to its institutions. In order to understand why international students in hospitality and tourism management programs choose one school over other options, the present study identified eight factors influencing international students’ hospitality and tourism management program selection in the United States. Results from a multivariate analysis of variance followed by univariate analyses of variance showed differences in the importance of five out of eight factors among undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral international students. Detailed discussions and implications are presented.