Revisiting adaptability

Abstract

Recognized for their influence on consumer decision-making, online consumer reviews have attracted the attention of scholars from marketing, consumer studies and tourism, as well as discourse studies. Taking Virtanen’s (2017) study of Amazon book reviews as our point of departure, this study builds on prior linguistic work describing the discourse focus of online reviews. We examine reviews of a virtual tourism product, Airbnb’s Online Experiences (AOE). Applying Virtanen’s tri-partite framework (Topic, Author, Audience) to a set of 200 AOE reviews, this study explores how review writers frame their evaluative comments. Building on this framework for analyzing the discourse structure and discourse focus of online reviews, our findings identify different patterns of adaptability in response to the communicative demands of this novel reviewing context.