Lecture：When Do Management Responses to Online Word-Of-Mouth Improve Performance?

Speaker：Karen Xie(University of Denver)

Time：10:00 a.m.,1st July, 2018

Venue: Room 309, Tongji Building A

Abstract:

Firms are shifting their social media emphasis from passive listening to active intervening. This paper investigates the influence of online management responses to online word of mouth (WOM) on revenue and advocates that responses to online reviews should be provided strategically. Using large-scale data of longitudinal online reviews, online management responses and revenue performance of 730 hotels in a specific U.S. market from 2005 to 2011, we examine how managers should respond to online WOM from the revenue standpoint. We find that online management responses can generally lift the revenue. More interestingly, this positive effect of online management responses can significantly vary depending on a hotel’s reputation and popularity measured by the valence and volume of online WOM. Our results hold robust for various revenue performance measures such as revenue itself, room price and occupancy rate.

Bio:

Karen Xie is an Assistant Professor of Hospitality Analytics at the Daniels College of Business, University of Denver. Her research focuses on the use of technology and data analytics to solve problems in the service industry. Specialty areas include the digital transformation in the service industry and platform-based markets. Her work relies primarily on econometrics and machine learning using large-scale business data.

Karen’s interdisciplinary work has published at hospitality and information systems journals such as Journal of Management Information Systems. Her applied research has been recognized by many awards, including the prestigious W. Bradford Wiley Memorial Research Award (2017), Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative (WCAI) Research Opportunities, and the Best Paper Award (finalist) from the China Summer Workshop on Information Management (CSWIM) (2016). Her work has also received multiple research grants such as the General Research Fund from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong. She is an active reviewer for Management Science and Information Systems Research.

Prior to pursuing her academic career, Karen worked as an analyst at the strategy consulting group of Accenture, Inc. During her tenure at University of Denver, she has been an analytics researcher/consultant for industry leaders, including Expedia, UBS, Unilever, Denver City Council, and Mars, Incorporated. She holds a Ph.D. from Temple University Fox School of Business, an M.Phil from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and a Bachelor of Management from Fudan University.