“Such large appetites, such shallow pockets......!!!!!!!!!”: Rapport-challenging practices in businesses’ responses to TripAdvisor reviews

Abstract

Anchored in the conceptual framework of rapport management theory, this article investigates businesses’ public responses to online customer reviews by turning its focus to a rapport orientation that has not yet been fully explored in studies of business-to-customer communication – rapport challenge. Drawing on a sample of 800 responses posted on TripAdvisor, the study presents a comprehensive taxonomy of the rapport challenge practices found in the data. Further, it accounts for rapport challenge not merely as a deviation from the interactional norms that dominate business-to-customer communication, but rather as a set of constructive practices that can bring benefits to the speaker, and can thus potentially be viewed as strategic. Rapport-challenging practices are shown to be closely related to the notion of the moral order, and they are embodied in two distinctly different concepts of face – Goffmanian (anchored in social roles and expectancies) and Levinasian (related to the authentic, individual self).