Customer encounter satisfaction and narrative force: an investigation of user-generated content on TripAdvisor

ABSTRACT Customer satisfaction research is often undertaken quantitatively employing multi-item standard questionnaires. Instead, this study seeks to understand how restaurant customers themselves articulate their encounter satisfaction experiences from the user-generated content (UGC) reviews they post on TripAdvisor. UGC reviews for all fine dining restaurants in Stockholm are collected. Leximancer and Diction software are used in the analyses to determine the concepts and themes used by UGC reviewers to express their encounter satisfaction and to measure narrative force among customers expressing different levels of restaurant encounter satisfaction. Results indicate that customers who provide different satisfaction scores on TripAdvisor also post UGC that exhibits divergencies in the concepts and themes they use to communicate their experience. Additionally, narrative force is stronger among customers providing reviews exhibiting moderate and low satisfaction scores.