A storytelling perspective on online customer reviews reporting service failure and recovery

This research tests and supports the proposition that when consumers read online customer reviews that include elements of a good story, they will deem those reviews to be more helpful when they decide whether to patronize hotels. Furthermore, results indicate that consumers perceive online reviews documenting a service failure to be less helpful than reviews that do not document a failure. Consumers perceive reviews reporting service failures in which the provider attempted a service recovery as no more helpful as reviews reporting failures with no recovery attempt. However, consumers give higher helpfulness scores to reviews that document an effective recovery. The hospitality industry can use these results to develop marketing techniques that encourage customers to tell effective service stories through online review forums.