The Effect of Brand on the Impact of e-WOM on Hotels’ Financial Performance
基于法国221家酒店的面板数据，研究发现电子口碑对非品牌连锁酒店的每间可用客房收入增长有正向影响，但对品牌连锁酒店无显著作用，品牌会削弱电子口碑的财务效应。
Travelers increasingly consider electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) from online review platforms when making their accommodation decisions. Theory predicts that e-WOM increases sales, but little is known regarding the role that branding plays in the relation between e-WOM and hotels’ financial performance. This study relied on financial data (including Revenue per Available Room—RevPAR—and sales profitability) and 34,164 online customer reviews gathered from TripAdvisor (as a proxy for e-WOM) based on panel data from 221 hotels, including not-branded and branded chain hotels in France from 2005 to 2013. The results show that the volume of reviews has no effect on RevPAR growth for branded chain hotels and a positive effect on RevPAR growth for not-branded chain hotels. In addition, the direct effect of the valence of online reviews and its interaction effect with the yearly and cumulative volume of online reviews on RevPAR growth and sales profitability is shown to apply to not-branded chain hotels but not to branded chain hotels. This study contributes to the e-WOM literature by revealing the role of a brand in e-WOM’s impact on hotel financial performance. Based on our results, managers of branded chain hotels should know that they might find it difficult to leverage e-WOM to achieve higher RevPAR growth and greater sales profitability, as their economic advantages derive from their brand instead of e-WOM.