The restaurant business value proposition: Intellectual text analysis of online customer reviews

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to study value proposition factors in online customer reviews that characterize consumer inquiries in the catering industry by using text-mining techniques. Research design focuses on the analysis of chain restaurants, which focuses on the usefulness of the service indicated in a quantitative system of scores, and pleasure factors for customers. Empirical data from 201 online reviews were collected from TripAdvisor service, which contains information about consumer preferences from St. Petersburg, Russia. In addition to text mining, the study used a correlation analysis of rating scores for chain restaurant customers, comparing the online reviews of satisfied and dissatisfied customers. The results of the study identified certain categories of factors of high importance for customers, which were revealed in both positive and negative online reviews. The results of the analysis help the restaurant management system to manage the value proposition properly taking into account various consumer factors of the preferences indicated in reviews. The research implications allow managers to purposefully select those factors that will achieve the desired effect in the relationship marketing. This study gives an opportunity to management specialists of the company explore and account for the emotional sentiment of online reviews.