B&B Customer Experience and Satisfaction: Evidence from Online Customer Reviews

Abstract

With the popularity of the internet and the rapid growth of user-generated content facilitated by various platforms of social media, online reviews have become an important source of information for customers to obtain product information and affect their purchasing decisions in the service industry. The accelerated development of bed-and-breakfasts (B&Bs) in the context of a rural revitalization strategy implies a shift in people’s demand from standardized to personalized accommodation. From the first establishment to the well-developed industry, the competition among diverse B&Bs is getting fiercer, and it is essential for business operators to understand their customers deeply and timely. Therefore, online reviews posted by customers freely and in real time were adopted to explore key dimensions reflecting customer experience and examine their relationship with customer satisfaction, which is a vital antecedent for customer loyalty, repurchase intention, etc. A total of 8,691 reviews from Ctrip were collected and then used for extracting relative insights and cognition by qualitative and quantitative analysis. Consequently, several implications for future research development and practical application are discussed for service promotion and development of the B&B industry. Funding: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2022S1A5A2A03052622).