| With the development of Internet technologies and emergence of rapid social rhythms,an increasing number of individuals are inclined to order meals on online takeaway platforms.Meituan Takeaway App,the largest and the most representative takeaway application in China,provides consumers not only a platform to order meals,but a channel to comment on foods and services of restaurants.Moreover,data shows that 58% consumers claim that their choice of ordering on takeaway app will be impacted by managements' online responses.Accordingly,it is extremely significant for managements to timely and appropriately reply to online consumers' comments to maintain rapport with customers and attract potential consumers' purchases.In view of this background,this thesis,based on rapport management theory,explores how managements(should)utilize relational acts in responses to enhance rapport with customers.Specifically,this study mainly discusses the following questions:1)What relational acts are utilized by managements in response to online consumer reviews on Meituan Takeaway App? How do those relational acts work based on rapport management theory?2)What are the distributions of relational acts used by managements in response to online reviews ?3)What are the distributions of the relational acts preferred by consumers in restaurant managements' responses?4)What are the discrepancies of preferences between consumers and managements in terms of relational acts?In order to ensure authenticity of this study,top ten restaurants(near a university)on Meituan takeaway app are selected in a comprehensive order.A total of 224 items of managements' replies from those ten stores are collected(2019.8.10-2020.1.20).Moreover,a semi-structured questionnaire is adopted to collect consumers' preferences for the relational acts exploited by managements.After quantitative and qualitative analysis of data collected,the following conclusions are drawn:First of all,according to Feng and Ren's(2019)classification about relational acts,there are mainly 14 categories of relational acts in the managements' responses:thanking,apology,promising,acknowledgement,unified reply,expectation of future purchase,justification,offer of solution,advertisement of service/products,recommendation to contact customer service,self-denigration,request for further details,comforting customers,small talks.Additionally,two new relational acts are found in data collected: festival greeting/blessing and request for forgiveness.Secondly,when managements respond to positive reviews,five types of relational acts are utilized most frequently,namely,thanking,acknowledgement,unified reply,promising,expectation of future purchase.Moreover,in managements' responses to negative reviews for food problems,they are inclined to adopt five relational acts most frequently: apology,promising,offer of solution,justification and thanking;when they reply to negative comments for service problems,they are apt to use three relational acts most frequently: apology,acknowledgement and offer of solution;additionally,after consumers gave negative reviews for delivery problems,the managements are prone to use three relational acts most frequently to reply guests and realize recovery of relations with customers,namely,apology,justification and thanking.Thirdly,in managements' replies to positive comments,four most popular relational acts among consumers are acknowledgement,small talks,thanking,festival greeting/blessing because those four relational acts attend to their association rights or meet their needs of quality face.Moreover,no matter for what reasons consumers give negative reviews(such as food problems,service problems,delivery problems),they most like managements' responses with following four relational acts: offer of solution,apology,acknowledgement,recommendation to contact customer service.Furthermore,when customers give negative comments for the problems of delivery or service attitude,they deem that their own consumption does not get equivalent service and have the desire of requiring managements' comfort and understanding.Accordingly,another three relational acts are favored by them as well,namely,comforting customers,promising and self-denigration.Finally,in managements' responses to positive reviews,negative comments for food problem,service issue or delivery problem,the largest discrepancies of preferences between consumers and managements in terms of relational acts respectively are shown on thanking,promising,acknowledgement,justification.Furthermore,through comparing the discrepancies of relational acts between consumers preferred and managements utilized in managements' responses,some suggestions are put forward for managements.Theoretically,two new relational acts are found in this paper,which enrich categories of relational acts used by managements in online responses;In practice,this paper provides managements with the scientific and theoretical guidance on utilizing relational acts so as to help them reply to online reviews more effectively and thus maintain or repair the rapport with consumers. |
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