Webcare salience and consumer engagement: The moderating effects of webcare valence, conversational human voice and response time

ABSTRACT Management of online reviews holds strategic significance for brands, especially in the hospitality sector, as more and more prospective consumers read reviews for brand evaluation and brand engagement. Contrary to most studies that examine the effects of webcare among reviewers, this study examines the effects of webcare on consumer brand engagement among review readers. Further, rather than focusing on a single review or a management response to a single review, it focuses on the perceived webcare efforts of a firm as a response to multiple reviews taken together by introducing a new concept, webcare salience, defined as the degree to which webcare is seen in a review set by the review readers or observers. Through a series of experiments in the tourism context, it examines underexplored effects of webcare salience on consumer brand engagement and, particularly, how other webcare variables, namely webcare valence, conversational human voice and response time, moderate such effects. This research triggers a new line of scholarly enquiry that takes into account the idea of review set and review readers’ perspectives.