Influence of prior reviews about a firm and its alliance partners on reviewers' feedback : evidence from the airline industry

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of other customer's opinion on a service firm and its alliance on the evaluation of the airline by the focal customer by integrating qualitative and quantitative user-generated content. The study also explores the relative importance of core and peripheral attributes in consumer evaluations. Design/methodology/approach: A text mining and natural language processing-based approach was followed to extract insights from the qualitative part of 18,457 consumer reviews, which were later analyzed along with the quantitative information obtained from the reviews using linear regression and logistic regression methods. Findings: The authors found that customer satisfaction and recommendation behavior is formed by own and others' opinion about the airline and alliance. The relative importance of the core and peripheral attributes depends on the psychological distance from the evaluation of the attribute. Research limitations/implications: The theoretical contribution and managerial implications have been discussed in detail. Practical implications: It helps in review management strategy, service design strategy and the alliance and partnership strategies of the airlines. Originality/value: This is the first paper that explores the impact attribute-level evaluations found in prior reviews on the future reviews of customers. It also explores the effect of prior reviews in the context of a service business and its alliances.