Management Response to Online Review: The Case of Hong Kong Luxury Hotels

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is regarded as crucial in business development. Given the intangible nature of tourism and hospitality products, potential customers find it hard to assess them before making purchase. Accordingly, online customer reviews and management responses have influential roles in their decision-making process. While a plethora of previous research focused on customer reviews, scholarly attention on how luxury hotels respond to the reviews was scant. Using content analysis, this study examines the management response characteristics of 35 luxury hotels and response style of 7 luxury chain hotels in Hong Kong. Their response characteristics including response frequency, responder’s job position, and timeliness of response were generally similar. The response style and tone (professional and conversational tones) vary with hotels even they are in the same hotel group. Implications on practice of management responses are offered for luxury hotel operators.

Parental Response Style to Adolescent Self-Harm: Psychological, Social and Functional Impacts

Adolescent self-harm is a significant public health issue. We aimed to understand how parent stress response styles to their child’s self-harm affects their wellbeing and functioning and the wider family. Thirty-seven participants in Australia (parents; 92% female) completed a mixed methods survey regarding their adolescent child’s self-harm. We conducted Pearson zero-order correlations and independent t-tests to examine the impact of parent response style on their quality of life, health satisfaction, daily functioning, and mental health. We also used thematic analysis to identify patterns of meaning in the data. Two-thirds of participants reported mental ill health and reduced functional capacity due to their adolescent’s self-harm. Parents with a more adaptive response style to stress had better mental health. Qualitative analyses revealed parents experienced sustained feelings of distress and fear, which resulted in behavioural reactions including hypervigilance and parental mental health symptoms. In the wider family there was a change in dynamics and parents reported both functional and social impacts. There is a need to develop psychological support for the adolescent affected and parents, to support more adaptive response styles, and decrease the negative effects and facilitate the wellbeing of the family unit.

Application of a Longitudinal IRTree Model: Response Style Changes Over Time

Traditional psychometric models focus on studying observed categorical item responses, but these models often oversimplify the respondent cognitive response process, assuming responses are driven by a single substantive trait. A further weakness is that analysis of ordinal responses has been primarily limited to a single substantive trait at one time point. This study applies a significant expansion of this modeling framework to account for complex response processes across multiple waves of data collection using the item response tree (IRTree) framework. This study applies a novel model, the longitudinal IRTree, for response processes in longitudinal studies, and investigates whether the response style changes are proportional to changes in the substantive trait of interest. To do so, we present an empirical example using a six-item sexual knowledge scale from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health across two waves of data collection. Results show an increase in sexual knowledge from the first wave to the second wave and a decrease in midpoint and extreme response styles. Model validation revealed failure to account for response style can bias estimation of substantive trait growth. The longitudinal IRTree model captures midpoint and extreme response style, as well as the trait of interest, at both waves.

5/7-POINT “LIKERT SCALES” AREN’T ALWAYS THE BEST OPTION Their validity is undermined by lack of reliability, response style bias, long completion times and limitations to permissible statistical procedures

Some research methods are used by default. Even if they undermine the validity of conclusions, authors no longer justify the use of default approaches and reviewers no longer query them. One such default is the use of bipolar ordinal 5/7-point survey answer formats, often incorrectly referred to as 5/7-point “Likert scales”. This Viewpoint argues that default answer formats should be replaced by thorough assessments of the benefit-to-cost ratio of alternative answer formats for every survey question asked. Benefits of answer formats include enabling respondents to meaningfully express themselves, while keeping respondent burden low. Costs include reducing data quality by introducing bias or over-burdening respondents, or by collecting data at a scale level that limits permissible statistical procedures.

Kernel Causality Among Teacher Self-Efficacy, Job Satisfaction, School Climate, and Workplace Well-Being and Stress in TALIS

Teachers play an important role in the educational system. Teacher self-efficacy, job satisfaction, school climate, and workplace well-being and stress are four individual characteristics shown to be associated with tendency to turnover. In this article, data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 teacher questionnaire are analyzed, with the goal to understand the interplay amongst these four individual characteristics. The main purposes of this study are to (1) measure extreme response style for each scale using unidimensional nominal response models, and (2) investigate the kernel causal paths among teacher self-efficacy, job satisfaction, school climate, and workplace well-being and stress in the TALIS-PISA linked countries/economies. Our findings support the existence of extreme response style, the rational non-normal distribution assumption of latent traits, and the feasibility of kernel causal inference in the educational sector. Results of the present study inform the development of future correlational research and policy making in education.

Why should you respond to customer complaints on a personal level? The silent observer's perspective

PurposeThis paper analyzes the effect of company response style and complaint source on silent observers' reactions to a service failure episode vented on Twitter.Design/methodology/approachIn a 2 × 2 experimental design, company response style (personalized vs automatic) and complaint source (ordinary Twitter user vs influencer) were manipulated to test the hypotheses.FindingsComplaint source moderates the effect of company response style on brand image, purchase intention and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Thus, the authors found that a personalized response to a complaint, compared to an automatic response, leads to a more favorable brand image as well as purchase intention and eWOM intention when the complainant is an ordinary Twitter user. However, the automatic response, compared to the personalized one, is better perceived when the complainant is an influencer. The authors also found that service failure response attribution and the emotions elicited during the firm–complainant interaction mediate the previous effects.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper deals with the company's initial reaction after a complaint is posted on Twitter; however, the complaint-handling process is longer, and both the customer and silent observers await a resolution. Future research could tackle subsequent stages of the process and different recovery strategies.Practical implicationsThe study offers meaningful insights regarding complaint handling on Twitter and how the effectiveness of the company response style depends on the complaint source. Marketers should offer adapted personalized responses to prompt positive behavioral intentions for ordinary Twitter users, who represent prospective consumers. However, a personalized response given to an influencer may be perceived more negatively, as silent observers may interpret that the company offers such a response just because the complaint comes from a well-known person who can reach many users and not because of an honest interest in serving consumers.Originality/valueThis research focuses on the underresearched area of the impact of online complaints on silent observers, a large group of prospective consumers quietly exposed to complaints aired on Twitter. The underlying mechanisms are also identified.

“All or nothing”

In the current study, we investigated the unique associations between dichotomous thinking, extreme response style (ERS), and the Dark Triad of personality, namely, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. We hypothesized that dichotomous thinking would exhibit a positive effect on ERS, and that dichotomous thinking would be positively associated with the Dark Triad even after accounting for ERS. Participants were 488 adults with a mean age of 29.54 years (SD = 10.38). Results confirmed dichotomous thinking positively predicts ERS, that the relationship between dichotomous thinking and the Dark Triad domains remains positive and significant even after accounting for ERS. Moreover, ERS manifested weak negative associations with the Dark Triad, with a significant relationship only with psychopathy. Findings from the current study help expand the understanding of both the substantive nature of response styles and the cognitive processes underlying the Dark Triad of personality.

Measuring Response Style Stability Across Constructs With Item Response Trees

Individual response style behaviors, unrelated to the latent trait of interest, may influence responses to ordinal survey items. Response style can introduce bias in the total score with respect to the trait of interest, threatening valid interpretation of scores. Despite claims of response style stability across scales, there has been little research into stability across multiple scales from the beneficial perspective of item response trees. This study examines an extension of the IRTree methodology to include mixed item formats, providing an empirical example of responses to three scales measuring perceptions of social media, climate change, and medical marijuana use. Results show extreme and midpoint response styles were not stable across scales within a single administration and 5-point Likert-type items elicited higher levels of extreme response style than the 4-point items. Latent trait of interest estimation varied, particularly at the lower end of the score distribution, across response style models, demonstrating as appropriate response style model is important for adequate trait estimation using Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation.