Webcare salience and consumer engagement: The moderating effects of webcare valence, conversational human voice and response time

ABSTRACTManagement 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.在线评论的管理对品牌具有战略意义，尤其是在酒店业，因为越来越多的潜在消费者阅读评论以进行品牌评估和品牌参与. 与大多数研究审查者中网络关怀的影响相反，这项研究审查了网络关怀对审查读者中消费者品牌参与的影响. 此外，它不是关注单个审查或管理层对单个审查的回应，而是关注公司对多个审查的反应，通过引入一个新概念，即网络关怀显著性（webcare salience），定义为审查读者或观察者在审查集中看到网络关怀的程度. 通过在旅游环境中的一系列实验，研究了网络关怀显著性对消费者品牌参与的未充分探索的影响，特别是其他网络关怀变量，即网络关怀价值、对话人声和响应时间，如何调节这种影响. 这项研究引发了一种新的学术探究，它考虑了评论集的思想，并回顾了读者的观点.KEYWORDS: Webcarewebcare salienceonline review managementmanagement response to reviewsconsumer brand engagementwebcare valenceconversational human voiceresponse time Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Financial assistance and ethics approvalThe authors would like to acknowledge the financial assistance (and IRB approval) by the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode under Small Grant Research Project #: SGRP/2018/101.R1.Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19368623.2023.2176395Notes1. Consumer Review Trends 2020, BrightLocal.