Discourse,C o n t e x t a n d M e d i a ( ) –64 Contentslistsavail ableatScienceDirect Discourse,C o n t e x t a n d M e d i a locate/dcm Hotels'r esp onse s t o o n l i n er e v ie w s : M a na g i n g consumerdissatisfact ion YiZ h a n g , C a m i l l a V s q u e z n UniversityofSouthFlorida, 4202E.FowlerAvenue,CPR419,Tampa,FL33620,UnitedStates AR T IC L EI NF O Articlehistory: Received4March2014Recei vedin r e v i se d for m15July 014 Accepted24 A u g u st 14 Availableo n l i n e S e p t e m b e r Keywords: OnlinecomplaintsTripAdvis orhotelreviewsElectronic wordofmouthReputationmana gementBusinessC M C Moveanalysis ABSTRACT In this study we investigate the generic structure of hotel responses to customer complaints posted onpopular travel website,TripAdvisor Extending the genre analytic notion of rhetorical moves (Swales,1981, 2004) to this computer-mediated text type, we analyzed 80 hotel replies that were posted inresponsetoonlineconsumercomplaints.Ouranalysisof theresponsesof4-and5starhotelslocatedin4popularurbantouristdestinationsinChinaindicatesthattenmovetypesarecommonlyfoundinthisgenre,witheight oftheseappearinginthemajority ofreviews Theseresults suggest that onlineresponsesfrombusinessesreplyingtousergeneratedreviewstendtobehighlyformulaicandconventionalized, with thanking and apologizing among the most common moves identified However,we also found considerable variation with respect to how specific hotels were about addressing theproblem(s)discussedintheoriginalcustomercomplaint,aswellastheextenttowhichhotelmanagement indicated having takenactionsto correct those problems Finally, our study found thatinthissetofresponses,hotelpersonneltendedtoemphasizeacorporate(ratherthanpersonal)identitywhenco nstructingresponsestocomplaints.Thestudy'sfindingsprovideinsightsintosomeof thewaysinwhichbu si nes se sa re managing consumer dissatisfac tionon l i ne &2014E l s e v i e r L t d A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d Introduction Theinternethasdramaticallychangedourwaysofcommunicating,distributing,and accessinginformationrelated to consumerdecision-making.Withinthelastdecade,theadventofWeb 2.0 and the diffusion of social media have meant a shift from a“top-down”business-to-consumer marketing paradigm to a“peer-to-peer”(P2P) process of information construction and distribu-tion (O'Connor, 2008) One of the most pervasive examples of thisshift are the billions of free and publiclyaccessible online reviewsofproductsandservices,knowncollectivelyas“eWOM,”orel ectronicwordofmouth.Unliketraditionalwordof mouth,eWOM is far less circumscribed with respect to social, geographicand temporal factors In fact, the immediacy and global reach ofonlineopinionsisunprecedented.Theexplosionof eWOM hasalsomeantthattheprovisionofinformationaboutgoodsandservic es has shifted from experts (for example, professional travelwriters, writing for specialized book series or magazines) to thehandsof“nonspecialist”userswhoparticipateinavarietyofactivities As might be expected, this form of online peer-to-peer information has given rise to a related genre: online responses frombusiness Such responses are sometimes referred to as“customercare,” “webcare,” “onlinereputationmanagement”and–whenresponding to negative comments–are part of a process known as“service recovery.”Both online consumer reviews and businesses'responsestothosereviewsrepresentrelativelynewgenre sofcomputermediatedcommunication(CMC),whichareintertextually connected; online reviews and responses to those reviewscanthereforebeconsideredpartofthesame“genre chain”(Swales, 2004) Since businesses' responses to online reviews havenotyetbeenstudiedfromadiscourseperspective,inthepresentstudy we extend the analytical framework of genre/move analysistothisspecificcomputer-mediatedtexttype,inordertogaininsightintosomeofthecommonrhetoricalstrateg iesusedbybusinessestomanageconsumerdissatisfactioninanonline environment.Specifically, we examine the most frequent movesfound in a dataset of 80 posts from hotels responding to consumerreviewso n Trip Advi so r 1.1 Electronicwordofmouth(eWOM)andtravel nCor respo nding a u t h o r T e l : ỵ 18139742548 E-maila d d r e s s : c v a s q u e z @ u s f e d u ( C V s q u e z ) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2014.08.004 2211-6958/&2014ElsevierLtd.Allrightsreserved Numerousstudieshaveattestedtotheimpactthatonlinereviewsh aveonconsumer spendingandbusinesses'sales(Jansen, Y.Zh an g, C V sq u e z /D i s c o u r s e , C o n t e x tan dM e d i a6 (2 01 4) – 64 2010;GhoseandIpeirotis,2011).Thesestudiesspeaknotonlytothemasse sofpeopleengagingwithandutilizingagenrewhichisrelativelyrecent,butalso to the very real economic impact andmaterialconsequences ofthis genre.As onepopularmarketingwriter explains,“Under the old rules if you upset a customer, wewere all told to expect that they would tell seven of their friends”;in contrast, one upset customer today“could potentially impactyour business negatively in front of hundreds or even thousands ofprospects”(Cockrum, 2011, p 2) For this reason, many businessesareexperimentingwithvariousoptionsforonlinereputatio nmanagement The purpose of the present study is to identify themost common generic features of one type of online reputationmanagement:businesses'responsestonegativeonline reviews Likeotherformsofsocialmedia,onlineconsumerreviewsca n becharacterizedasparticipatory,collaborative,usergenerated,dynam ic and rich in information Online reviews are believed to beespecially valuable when it comes to providing information aboutsubjectively-experienced intangible or“experience”goods, such asrestaurantvisitsandhotelstays(incontrastto“searchgoods,”which are tangible objects, such as appliances or electronics, andfor which more objective product descriptions are often consid-eredto be adequate sources of information) In addition, onlinereviews have become particularly important for businesses whichdeal with“high risk”and costly services, such as those associatedwith leisure travel In a study conducted byGretzel et al (2007)they found that nearly half of the travelers surveyed indicated thattheyusedconsumergeneratedcontentintheirtravelplanningproc ess.Oneofthemostpopularforumsforthistypeoftravelinformationis Tr i pA dvi s o r TripAdvisorc u r r e n t l y e n j o y s ar e p u t a t i o n a s o n e o f t h emost successful websites dedicated totravel, providing travelers withinformation on trip and hotel booking, travel planning, as well asreviewsofvariousbusinesses andfacilities.TripAdvisorplays adominantroleintheonlinetravelmarketandhascontinuedtogrowin popularitysinceitsinceptionin2000(Law, 2006) At present,the site claims to have over 260 million unique monthly visitors,and over 150 million reviews and opinionscovering more than 3.7million accommodations, restaurantsand attractions (TripAdvisor,n.d.) Though the site is clearly multi-functionalin nature, one of itsmajor functions is providing user-generated content on travelrelatedinformation, including reviewsof hotel experiences Besides allowingconsumers to post their reviews of hotels,TripAdvisoralso provides aspace for hotel management to respond to each review (althoughhotelrepresentativescannotremoveoreditexistingreviews) Asmight beexpected,mosto f theexistingresearchon TripAdvisorcomesfromthefieldsofhospitalityandtourismstudies(e g.,Briggsetal.,2007;ChungandBuhalis,2008;Cunninghametal.,2010;Ekizetal., 2012;Miguénsetal.,2008;O'Connor, 2008, 2010; Ricci and Wietsma, 2006; Tuominen, 2011;Whitehead, 2011) and has explored relationships between reviewcontent and other measures of hotel quality More recent researchin this area has been concerned with creating automated systemsfor detecting deceptive reviews (e.g.,Ott et al., 2011; Wu et al.,2010; Yoo and Gretzel, 2009) And still other authors have taken adiscourseanalyticperspectivetothestudyofonlinetravelreviews,incl udingVásquez(2011,2013)whoinvestigatedthediscourse pragmatic features of a sample of 100“Rant”(negative)hotel reviews, as well as the narrativity and involvement in thesame set of reviews, andTian (2013), who explored patterns ofengagementinasampleofChineseandEnglishhotelreviews.Howev er, hotels' responses to online reviews have not yet beenstudied from a discourse perspective In order to offer a prelimin-ary description of this text type, and to provide a foundation forfuture research on this important form of online business communication, we conducted a top-down analysis of the rhetoricalmovesth a t are mo st ty p i c a l o f t h i s g e n r e 1.2 Hotelresponsestoreviews AseWOMcontinuestoexpandandtomakeanimpactonconsumerd ecision-makingandspending,moreandmorebusi-nessesaretakingnote,and are realizing that it is important toengageinonlinereputationmanagement(O'Connor,2010;Vásquez, 2014) This represents a nascent area of inquiry (VanNoort and Willemsen, 2011), and few, if any, studies have beenconducted specifically on businesses responses to online reviews.However some preliminary data about hotel responses to reviewsare available For example,Vásquez (2014)observed that whilehotelresponseswereinfrequentonTripAdvisor,inreviewssam pled in 2008 (only 1%), this proportion had risen to over 10%inreviewssampledjustafewyearslater.Similarly,in2010,O'Con norfoundthatapproximately10%oftheTripAdvisorreviewsin his sample includedaresponsefromthehotel.Andinastudyfrom 2011 (cited inSparks et al., 2013), researchers found that 7%ofh o t e l s r e s p o n d e d t o o n l i n e r e v i e w s T h e r e f o r e , t h e r e s e e m s t o be a trend of more and more hotels exploiting the affordances oftheonline“right-ofreply”spaces(HeyesandKapur,2012)providedbyreview sitessu ch asTri pAdvis o r 1.3 Genre,genrechainsandintertextuality Thenotionofgenreencompassesbothtexttypeandsocialaction(S wales,1990).Hotelrepresentatives,inrespondingtoonline consumer reviews, are not only participating in a form ofsocial action that entails a specific, goal-oriented activity, but theyare also producing online texts which are potentially viewable by avast and indeterminate audience Among the goals of these textsare to publicly acknowledge–and in some cases, to validate, orrepudiate– acustomer'sremarksrelatedtonegativeand/orpositive aspects of their experience Repairing or maintaining thebusiness'srelationshipwith the customer may be another goal.And considering that the audience of readers of these texts can bemuchwiderthanjusttheoriginalaggrievedcustomer,onlinereputa tionmanagementrepresentsyetanotherimportantgoal.Therelations hipbetweengenre,communicativepurpose,andrhetorical moves can be understood in the following manner:“a given communicative purpose triggers a particular genre, whichisrealizedby aspecificmovestructureorfunctionallydistinctstages along with the genre unfolds The move structure, in turn, isrealized by rhetorical strategies or formal choices of content andstyle”(Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Lorenzo-Dus, 2013, p 13) Oneaimo f t h e p r e s e n t s t u d y i s t o d e s c r i b e t h i s g e n r e , b y i d e n t i f y i n g the moves, orstages, which are most characteristic of businesses'responses to reviews Thesefindings may help business communicationeducatorsandpractitionerstobetterunderstandtheconstitu entf u n c t i o n a l u n i t s o f t h i s r e l a t i v e l y n ew genreo f C M C Althought h e l a s t f e w y e a r s h a v e s e e n a n i n c r e a s e i n t h e number of studies exploring various discourse features characteristic of the genre of online consumer reviews (Mackiewicz, 2008,2010a, 2010b; Pollach, 2006; Skalicky, 2013; Tian, 2013; Vásquez,2011, 2013, 2014): we have not identified any studies which haveexamined any of the discourse features of the closely related genreof businesses' responses to online reviews As mentioned earlier,onlineconsumerreviewsandbusinesses'responsestothoserevi ewsc a n b e r e g a r d e d a s b e l o n g i n g t o t h e s a m e “ genrec h a i n ” AsmediaresearchersGarcés-ConejosBlitvichandLorenzoDus(2013)explain,genrechainsconsistof“genresthatarelinkedtoge therandhaveatransformativeinfluenceononeanother”(2013, p 15) Businesses' responses to online reviews represent agenre that is reactive to–and consequently, textually dependentupon–theconsumerreviewswhichprecedethem.Yetit isunclear how explicitly theseintertextualconnections are Y.Zhang, C V ás qu e z /D i s c o u r s e , C o n t e xt an dM e di a6 ( 20 ) 54 – 64 markedinthetexts.Inordertobetterunderstandhowdetailedbusin esses are, when attending to specific issues mentioned in the originalcustomerreviews,anotheraimofthepresentstudywastoinve stigatetheextenttowhichhotels'responsesreferbackintertextuallyt oth eo rig i na l c o n s u m e r p o s t functional components, as basic elements […]canbetaughttoa novicewriterofa genre”(p.313,emphasisours) of a genre particular 1.5 Genreanalysisandmoves 1.4 “Conversational/humanv o i c e ” Not surprisingly, how businesses use the internet to communicate with customers has been of great interest to scholars in thefieldofpublicrelations.Publicrelationsexpertspointoutthatcomm unicatingthrough digitalmedia offers businessesthe oppor-tunity to interactwith consumers via a“humanized”or“conversa-tional voice.”In public relations research,“conversational humanvoice”isoftenconsideredtobeoneeffectivecharacteristicinre sponses to crisis, as well as to the management of an organization's reputation–especially when that organization has been thetarget of“negative word of mouth”(Schultz et al., 2011) Of course,online reputation management extends to many modes of communication,suchasmessagespostedonTwitterorFacebook,announc ementsmadeoncorporate blogs, as well as responsestoonlinereviews.Typically,scholarshipinpublicrelationsa pproaches“ conversationalh u m a n v o i c e ”asa s e t o f d i s p o s i t i o n s –s u c h a s treatingo t h e r s as human, being opent o d i a l o g , welcoming conversational communication, and providing promptfeedback (e.g.,Kelleher and Miller, 2006; Sweetser and Metzgar,2007) However, one communication scholar has recently pointedout that research in this area tends to overlook the constitutiveroleofdiscourseinsuchtexts,arguingthatmoststudiesof corporatecommunication“donotfullyconsidertheroleoflanguagea nditsstrategicuseasacriticalpartofrelationshipmanagement and image restoration practices, nor they subjectthisaspectofdigitalbusinessdiscoursetorigorousanalysis”( Creelman,2 ).T h e r e f o r e , a t h i r d g o a l o f t h e p r e s e n t s t u d y i s toconsider“conversationalhumanvoice”intermsofa fewobviouslinguisticfeatures:propernamesandfirst-personpronouns.Intheserespects,wehopethatourdiscoursecenteredapproachcancomplementresearchfromthepreviouslymen -tionedfieldssuchasbusinesscommunication, public relations,andso c ia l m e d i a m a n a ge me n t Oneimportantaspectofbusinesses'responsestoonline reviewsistheirverypublicnature Just as the affordances ofnewmediaenableonlinecustomercomplaintstobereadbythousan ds of other readers, businesses responses posted onlinemay be addressed to a specific aggrieved customer, but they tooare available to be read by a much wider public In fact, the impactofthesetextson“overhearers,”orobservers,maybequitesignificant.Creelman (2014)explains that the high stakes associatedwiththesetextsmeansthattheirconstructionmaybechallengin gfortherepresentativesresponsibleforproducingthem Inthefaceofcustomerdissatisfaction,businessesarenowthrust into the awkward social situation of publicly respondingtonegativefeedback,wheretheirresponsetoanindivi dualcustomer is weighed and scrutinized, not only by the immedi-ate correspondent but also by a community of consumers andpotentialrespondents.Thisheightenedscrutinyplacestheco mpanyrepresentativeswhorespondto thesepostsunderconsiderable pressure as they publicly negotiate not only theimmediate exchange at hand but also corporate identity, brandreputation,cu s to m erre l at io ns , l o ya l ty ,a nd trust The pressure facing authors of these texts, as described above,suggeststhatthisisagenrethatshouldperhapsbetaughtexplici tlytostudentsofbusinessandbusinesscommunication Genreanalysisinvolvesthestudyofdiscoursestructuresoftexts as wellasoftheinteractionsbetweentextsandmembersofthe discourse communities who produce and consume those texts(e.g.,Martin, 1985; Bhatia, 2002; Swales, 2004) The present studybegins with the notion of“moves,”originally formulated by JohnSwales (1981)to describe the generic structure of the researcharticle.Adaptedforthedescriptionandanalysisofother texttypes, the analysis of moves has been a productive approach tounderstanding the rhetorical structure of various genres (Swales,1990;Connor,1996;Martin,2003).Moveanalysishasbeende scribed as a top down approach to analyzing texts representa-tive of a particular genre AsBiber and Conrad (2009)explain, inthisapproach“thetextisdescribedasasequenceof‘moves,’where each move represents a stretch of text serving a particularcommunicativefunction”(p 15).Theygoontoexplainthat amoveanalysisisoftenconductedusingasmallcorpus,oracollection of texts that are representative of a specific genre Forexample,Biberetal.(2007)carriedoutamoveanalysisofonetypeof philanthropic discourse: fundraising letters Building on theirearlierresearch(Upton,2002;ConnorandUpton,2003),theautho rs analyzed a corpus of fundraising documents (which wereproducedbymanydifferentorganizations)andidentified thesevenmo veswh ic hoccurredthroughout theirdata(Table1 ) Basedo n t h e i r a n a l y s i s , t h e a u t h o r s w e r e a b l e t o e s t a b l i sha prototype of the genre and to discover the most frequent movetypeswh ic h re flectth e ma ins t rat egi es u se d by fu ndraise rs The present study takes a similar analytic approach to describebusinessresponsesfoundintheonline“right-ofreply”spaces(Heyes and Kapur, 2012) that are located on online review sites,which provide businesses with the opportunity to publicly reply tonegative (or positive) reviews Because this text type has not yetbeen described from a discourse perspective, the primary aim ofourstudywastoidentifyitsgenericfeatures.Following priorgenreanalyticresearch(e.g.,Bhatia,1993;DosSantos2002;Flow erdewandWan,2006; Swales, 1990, 2004), we analyzedthe data in order to identify distinct moves which appear in hotels'responsestonegativereviewspostedbyconsumersonTripAdvisor Adopting a move structure analysis allowed us to indentify somecommonstrategiesusedbyhotelsinmanagingtheironlinereputa tions A top-down move analysis also seemed most appro-priate for examininglanguage use in terms of its communicative,orrhetorical,functions.Furthermore,whereasprevi ousgenreanalysesofbusinessdiscoursehaveexaminedmoretraditio nalmodesofwrittencommunication– e.g.,lettersofapplication(Bhatia, 1993), letters of negotiation (Dos Santos, 2002), and taxcomputationletters(FlowerdewandWan,2006)– ourstudyextends this analytic framework to a newer genre of computer-mediatedbus in ess d i s c o u r s e Next,a s wehave d i s c u s s e d above, onlinec o n s u m e r reviews and businesses' responses to those reviews belong to the samegenrech ain G ive nt h at bus in e ss e s' r es p o n s e s are , i nso me se n se , Table1 Moves t r u c t u r e o f f u n d r a i s i n g l e t t e r s ( Bibere t a l , 0 ,p ) MoveType1 MoveT y p e Getattention Introducet h e ca us e a n d / o r e s ta b l i s h c r e d e n t i a l s o f o r g MoveT y p e Solicitre s p on s e Fortunately,asUptonandConnor(2001)haveargued,“‘moves’or MoveT y p e MoveT y p e MoveT y p e MoveT y p e Offeri n c e n t i v e s Referencei n s e r t Expressg r a t i t u d e Concludew i t h p l e a s a n t r i e s intertextually dependent on the consumer reviews which precedethem(i.e., without onlineconsumerreviews, thegenre of businesses'responsestothosereviewswouldnotexist),wealsowanted to determine the extent to which responses referred backtospecifici n f o r ma ti o n m e n t i o n e d i n t h e r e v ie w Th is wo u l d h e l pus determine the degree to which businesses' responses attendedtothes pec i ficissue sr s e d int h e o rigin al rev iews Finally, taking up the issue of“human voice”or“personalization”of business communication, we examined the use of personalpronounsand signature linesto determine the extent to whichauthors of such responses established a personal versus a corpo-rate identity in this genre of computer mediated communication(CMC).Although“conversationalhumanvoice”asiti sused inother disciplines has not been operationalized in linguistic terms,weproposethatfirstpersonsingularpronouns,andselfidentifying by means of a given and/or family name, are amongthe most obvious linguistic resources that can be used to convey a“humanv o i ce ”ina co m p u t e r - m e d i a t e d c o n t e x t Thepresentstudyaddressedthefollowingresearchquestion s: (1) What are the most common moves in hotel responses to onlinenegativereviews? (2)Towhatextentdohotelresponsesreferbacktospecificdetail sfoun dintheoriginal consumercomplaints? (3) What are the most common self-identification practices foundinthesehotelresponses?Thisapproachallowedusto identifybothpatternsofsimilarityandvariationamongindividualresp onses It is our hope that this study also provides a basis forfuture research to explore the linguistic realizations of each moveingre ate r d etail to the next most highly-ranked (4–5 star) hotel in that city, and wefollowed the same sampling procedure, until we saved two morehotelresponses.Wedidthisuntilwehadatotalof100hotelresponses, which corresponded to 100 unique consumer reviews.Ourprocessprovidedaformofsemirandomization,andalsoallowedustoseewhetheroneormorehotelre presentativesresponded to different consumer reviews about a single property.In addition, we were able to notice trends in response behavior formultiple hotel properties belonging to the same hotel chain, butlocated in different Chinese cities–a point which we will return toagainneart h een d o f t h i s a rt ic l e Ultimately,100h ote l r es p o ns e s t o sumerr e v ie ws were downloadedandsaved.However,20ofthesereviews werewritteninlanguages other than English (i.e., 19 in Chinese and1 in Spanish) These reviews were excluded from the analysis tokeepthevariableoflanguageconsistentacrosstexts.Thefinaldataset consistsof80hotelresponsestoreviews(Table 2), with atotalof9 05w o r d s The average word count for hotel responses is 118 words, withthe shortest response comprised of only 27 words, and longestresponse comprised of 471 words In the following discussion, allexamplesarepresentedwiththeiroriginalspellings;howeverspeci fic hotel and author names havebeen anonymized,due toethicalco ns id era tio n s For our analytic procedures, we followed prior genre analyticresearch,andweusedBiberetal.'s(2007)studyasamodel.Rea ding through our data several times, we labeled each sentence,or clausal unit, according to its primary communicative function.Thiswasaninductiveprocess,andinvolvedseveraliterative roundsofrefiningandreducing ourlabels,untilweeventuallyidentifiedthetenmajormovetypesthat wediscussinthefollowingsectio n Methods Resultsanddiscussion Ino r d e r t o a n a l y z e a n d d e s c r i b e t h e m o v e s w h i c h a p p e a r i n this type of discourse, a total of 80 responses from hotels werecollectedandanalyzed.BecauseTripAdvisorfeaturesover150mil lionreviews,itwasnecessarytodelimitoursample As aresult, we chose to focus on hotels from a single country, just asseveral other studies ofTripAdvisorhave done (e.g.,Au et al., 2009;Briggsetal.,2007).WeselectedChinabecauseitisa countrywhich is currently experiencing unprecedented levels of internationaltourism,duetorecentpoliticalandeconomicchanges.Hotels' responses posted onTripAdvisor–following up on custo-mer complaints posted to the same site during the time period ofJulySeptember 2013–were sampled from reviews of hotels fromfourmajor tourist cities in China: Xi'an, Hangzhou, Nanjing, andChongqing These four Chinese cities were selected on the basis ofregional diversity, because they represent popular tourist destina-tions,and because they offer a selection of both chain and localhotels.1Afteraninitialscanofhotelclassesandresponses,itbeca me apparent that most lower-category hotels in these citiesdidnotprovideresponsestocustomerreviewsonTripAdvisor.Th erefore, to narrow the sample further, only responses from to5st arhotelswe reconsideredfo r th es tu d y TheautomatedsortingsystemprovidedbyTripAdvisorwas used to select the most frequently-reviewed hotels in each of thefour cities Starting with the most highly-ranked 4–5 star hotel ineach city, the top“terrible”(1 star) or“poor”(2 star) reviews wereidentified,andwerethenscanneduntilahotelresponse wasfound Thisfirst response from a hotel to a negative review wassaved(alongwiththeoriginalconsumerreviewthatitcorresponded to), and this process was repeated for the third responsefromthesamehoteltoanegativereview.Afterthat,weproc eeded In this section, we present the move types that appear mostfrequently in the 80 hotel responses We discuss the frequenciesandfunctionsofeachmove,alongwiththeirtypical locationwithintheresponsetext.Wealsopresentourfindingsaboutva ryingdegreesofintertextuality(alongwithgeneralversusspecific responses) as well as about“conversational human voice,”or authors' discursive constructions of personal versus corporateidentities 3.1 Movesinhotelresponses Informed by earlier genreanalyticstudies,we identifiedtendistinctmovesasthemajorfunctionalcomponentsofhot elresponses.Table3presentsthemostcommonmovesfoundinhotelres ponsestonegativeonlinereviews,intheirorderoffrequency As thefinal column ofTable 3indicates, none of the 80 hotelresponses analyzed included all ten movesin their messages How-ever, the majority of the reviews did includethefirst eight move typesshowna b o v e W e n o w t u r n t o a m o r e d e t a i l e d d e s c riptionand Table2 Breakdowno f h o t e l r e s p o n s e s t o r e v i e w s , b y c i ty a n d r a t i n g 1Beijing a n d S h a n g h a i w e r e d e l i b e r a t el y avo ided, b e c a u s e t he v a s t n u m b e r o f hotelsinbothcitieswasbelievedtoposedifficultyinnarrowingthesample City Terrible( s t a r ) Poor( s t a r ) Total Xi'an Hangzhou Nanjing Chongqing Total 10 29 20 12 15 51 27 20 25 80 discussionofeachmovetype (Anexampleofatypicalhotelresponsewithindividualmoveslabeledintextcanbeseenintheappendix.) 3.1.1 Move1:Expressgratitude AsTable 3indicates, of the 10 moves, expressing gratitude wasthe most frequent move found in this corpus ¼ (N73) This moveservestothankconsumersforvariousactionsrelatedtotheirhotel experience.A s c a n b e s ee n i n t h e e x a m p l e s be l o w , t h i s m o v e c an be further categorized into three different sub-types: gratitude forthestay/choosing the hotel (1), gratitude for providing feedback(2),a nd g rati tu d e ing en era l ( ) (1) Thankyouverymuch forstayingwithus (2) Thanky o u v e r y m u c h f o r s h a r i n g y o u r v a l u a b l e f e e d b a c k regardingyourrecentvisittotheSpaat[hotelname]Hangzh ou (3) Thankyouonceagain Thismoveappearsmostofteninthebeginningoftheresponses.However, thesecondsub-typemayalsoappearinthemiddleofthemessage, and the third sub-typeoftenappearsattheendoftheresponse 3.1.2 Move2:Apologizeforsourcesoftrouble Since we are focusing on hotels responses to negative reviews(i.e., reviews which accompanied overall ratings of“Terrible”and“Poor”),itisnotsurprisingthatthemovetype,Apolo gizeforSources of Trouble, appears as the second most common move ¼ inthecorpus(N68).Thismovefunctionsasanapologyfortheproblem(s) experienced by the guest during the hotel visit, whichresulted in the posting of a negative review Instances of this moveincludedth el exica lite ms sorry,apo lo gy ,orapolog ize (4) Pleaseacceptoursincereapologyforanyinconveniencecaused (5) Wearesorrytohearwithyourstayexperiencewithus This move appears in variable positions in each response Inmost cases, it appears at the beginning of the text Also, for someresponses, this move appears more than once, such as a secondappearance near the end of the text, which strengthens the overallforce of the apology In some instances, this move appears in thesamesentenceasMove6,AcknowledgeComplaint,makingitdifficul t to sometimes delineate a clear boundary between thesetwomo ves 3.1.3 Move3:Invitationforasecondvisit This move serves as an invitation for customers to return foranotherhotelexperience.Itappearsin66ofthetotal80responses (6) Welookforwardtowelcomingyoubacktoourhotelagain (7) We appreciate your comments and sincerely hope that youwill return to the[hotelname]Xi'an again in the not too distantfuture Move typically appears mostly the near end of the message,and often functions as a pre-closing strategy, signaling the closingofthehotelreply.Eightofthehotelmanagerswhowroterespon ses also provided their personal contact for the customers'future visits, which potentially signals complimentary services ordiscounts for the customers on a return visit For business offering“serviceproducts” –suchashotelsandrestaurants– customerloyalty and repeat business are important goals (Heyes and Kapur,2012;Sp arks e ta l ,2 13 ) 3.1.4 Move4:Openingpleasantries Move appears in 64 out of 80 hotel responses, and it serves asano p e n i n g f o r th e m a i n co n t en t of t h e h o te l 's me s s a g e (8) Dearv a l u e d g u e s t (9) Dear[name] As seen in the above examples, this move does not include anycontent related to actual feedback; rather, it functions to addressthe corresponding customers On theTripAdvisorwebsite, hotelscan respond directly to customer reviews by using an online form,which is not structured in such a way that it requires the hotel toaddress the specific customers, or to include their user names Yetthe frequent use of this move suggests that in hotel responses tocustomerreviews,openingpleasantries– whicharegenerallyfound in formal letters and personalized email messages–are alsoused frequently in this genre, most likely to mark this newer genreofCMCa s a f o r m a l t y p e o f co rr es p o n d e n ce 3.1.5 Move5:Proofofaction Thismoveisfoundin63outof80hotelresponses,anditservesasareas suranceforconsumersthatactionshavebeentakenregardingthecont entinthereviews,ascanbeseen in theexamplebelo w (10) Rest assured since last year we have been concentrating ontrainingandhavemademanyimprovementsintheserviceandattitudeo fourt eam However, within those 63 replies that included this move, onlyone third ¼ (N19) actually included detailed explanations of theactionstakentoredressthespecificissuesdescribedinthereviews In contrast, most of the responses provided much moregeneralaccounts,suchasactionhasbeentakenby[…]department/ managementte am ,ass ee n int h ef ol l o win g example (11) We would like to assure you that we have communicatedyour feedback with the concerned department and corrective actionshaveb ee nt ake n 3.1.6 Move6:Acknowledgecomplaints/feedback Thismoveacknowledgesandmakessomereferencetothecustome rs' message Not surprisingly, this move type appears in asubstantialnumber(53/80)ofresponses,asmosthotelswhopost Table3 Tenm o v e s i n h o t e l r e s p o n s e s t o o n l i n e c o n s u m e r c o m p l a i n t s Move Example N Expressg r a t i t u d e Thanky o u o nce a g a i n 73 ApologizeforsourcesoftroubleWea r e so rr y t o hearw i t h y o u r st ay e xpe r ie nce w i t h u s 68 Invitationf o r a s e c o n d v i s i t Wel o o k f o r w a r d t o we lcomin gy o u ba ck t o o ur h o t e l ag n 66 Openingpleasantries Dearv a lu e d g ue s t 64 Proofo f a c t i o n Wewouldliketoassureyouthatwehavecommunicatedyourfeedbackwiththeconcerneddepartmentandcorrectiveactionshave63 beent a k e n Acknowledgecomplaints Wea p p r e c i a t e y ou r f e e d ba ck a s t h is i s o u r be st re s o u r c e f o r i m p r o v i n g g ue s t s e r v i c e s 53 /feedback Refert o c u s t o me r r e v i e w s Wew i l l di re ct t he i n f o r m at i o n a b o u t t h e b a t h ro o m an d R oo m se rv i ce w h at y o u me nti o ne d t o t h e a p p r o p r i a t e de p ar t me nt 50 Closingp l e a s a n t r i e s Yourssincerely 49 Avoidanceofr eo cc ur ri n Yourkindfeedbackenablesustotargetproblemareasandtakethenecessaryactionstoensuresimilarsituationscanbeavoidedin26 gproblems thefu t ur e 10 Solicitr e s p o n s e …pleasec o n t a ct m e at [ n a m e @ h o t e l c o m ] so I c a n di sc us s w i t h y o uf o rt he p r o p e r ar ng ement 24 responses to reviews acknowledge their willingness to acceptfeedbackandc o mm en ts (12) Weappreciateyourfeedbackasthisisourbestresourceforimprov ingg ue s t s er vi c e s (13) At[hotelname],westrivetoprovideasuperiorserviceexperie nceforeverycustomer;thereforeyourfeedbackisveryimportantt o us This move either appears alone (as can be seen in example 13),or–as mentioned earlier–it is sometimes combined with Move 2,ApologizeforSourcesofTrouble,asinexampl e14 (14) Pleaseallowme,firstandforemost,toextendourapologiesforthe disappointmentyouhaveexperiencedduringyourspatreatment with the assurance that we continuously strive to improveours e r vi ce basedo n feedbacksuchasyo urs However, in nearly 1/3 of the responses, hotels did not includethismove.Usuallythiswasthecasewhenhotelsinsteadpr ovideda detailed explanation for the consumers' negative experiences, orwhenthey simply skippeditaltogether andmadeuseofothermoves,suchasMove2, Apologizefo rSource sofTrouble 3.1.7 Move7:Refertocustomerreviews Amongthe80hotelresponses,50respondedtoaspecificfeature of consumers' negative reviews For example, in excerpt 15below, the customer had complained about the size of the roomwhichw as c o n s i d e r a b l y smallert h a n whatt h e y had b o o k ed (15) Upon receiving your comments we conducted investigationat once Your room was blocked for maintenance and was due to thecarelessnessof our staff, it was released to sell as available room.Throughthisincidentandsubsequentlyinadequateserviceyouen counteredinourexecutiveclublounge,showingthatwehaveinconsistents e r vi c e an d s t andar d Asmostofthereviewersdoincludedetailedaccountsanddescripti ons of their negative experiences, one might expect thathotels responding to such reviews would include direct referencesto the original posts However, even though this move does appearwith relative frequency, hotels differ considerably in the extent towhicht h e y r e f e r i n d e t a i l t o t h e c o n t e n t f o u n d i n t h e c ustomer review to which they are responding This issue will be discussedfurtheri n asu bs equ en tse ct io n o f t h i s art ic l e 3.1.8 Move8:Closingpleasantries The last move type to appear in the majority of reviews,ClosingPleasantries, was found in 49 responses Its function is obvious: itsignalsth e en d i n g oft h e h o te l re sp o n s e (16) Yourssincerely (17) Bestandwarmestwishestoyou.GuestRelationsManager Intermsofitsfrequency,move8contrastsslightlywithMove1(Openin gPleasantries),whichappearsin 64oftheresponses(i.e., move8appearsin24%fewerresponsesthanMove1) Another distinction among the closing pleasantries is the use ofpersonal signatures, titles or corporate affiliations Among the 49responses that included closing pleasantries,31hotelmessagesendedwiththeactualnamesoftheaut horsand/orwiththeirsignaturelines, usually indicatingan individualina positionofleadership,eitherinhotelmanagementorcustomerservice However, a few general references to the hotel or the ¼ managementteam were also found in the data (N14) One potential reason forthismaybethatTripAdvisorprovides the responder's names andtitles at the header of the hotel message In other words, the sitearchitecture,specificallythe“right-ofreply”(HeyesandKapur,2012)spaceprovidedbyTripAdvisor,includ esaheaderwhichprefaces each hotel message, making the information in thefinalsignatureline(name/title/affiliation)somewhatredundant,as canbes ee ni n Fig 3.1.9 Move9:Avoidanceofreoccurringproblems Promises of forbearance of this type appear in 26 responses.Basically,byincludingthismove,the hotels attempt to ensurethecustomersthatthecausesofdissatisfactionareisolatedinci dents,a n d t h a t t h e y w i l l n o t h a p p e n i n t h e f u t u r e H o w e v e r , thismoveissometimessubstitutedwithmove5,in which thehotelassuresthecustomerthat some action has been taken.Also,i n s o m e c a s e s , m o v e s a n d c o o c c u r i n c l o s e p r o x i m i t y too n e a n o t h e r B e c a u s e t h e s e twomovesaresomewhatsimilar Fig.1.H e a d e r informationthatappearsonTripAdvisor's“rightofreply”featureforhotels infunction,2thismay account for the relatively smaller numberofo c c u r r e n c e s o f t h i s m o v e (18) …them a n a g e m e n t team will paym o r e a t t e n t i o n to improve the service as well as the facilities to ensure this situationdoesno t r eo cc ur atany time (19) Your kind feedback enables us to target problem areas andtakethenecessaryactionstoensuresimilarsituationscanbeavoidedint h e f ut ur e 3.1.10 Move10:Solicitresponse In the dataset, only24 hotels offered customers the opportunity forfurther communication with the hotel There are two basic subcate-gories of this move type Thefirst appears along with the hotel'sdetailed explanation of response/action taken to address customers'negativereviews.Intheseinstances,thismoveusuallyappea rswhenthehotelsarenotclearaboutthecustomers'complaints,andnee dtoaskforfurtherclarification.ThesecondtypeappearsalongwithMove 3,whichwelcomesthecustomersforafuturereturntothehotel.Thistype generally functions as a means for the customers to receive acomplimentaryservicethathasbeenoffered (20) …pleasecontactmeat[name@hotel.com]soIcandiscuss withyoufortheproperarrangement (21) Ilookforwardtowelcomingyouagainin[hotelname]Nanjing,and pleasecontactmedirectlyifthereisanythingIcanhelpyouwith Ourfindings suggest that this genre is a fairly formulaic one,withverylittledeviationfromtheabovedescribedtenmoves.Whendeviationsdooccur,theytendtoconsistof additionalexplanations (as can be seen below, in Example 25) Thisfindingsuggeststhatalthoughbusinesses'responsestoonlinerev iewsrepresentarelativelynewgenreofCMC,someofthegenre'sconventi onsperhapscomefromother,existinggenres.AsdiscoursescholarJohnstone(2008)pointsout,newgenres oftendraw on older, more established genres The typical ordering ofmoves here suggests that this is the case: Businesses' responses toonline reviews generally resemble the structure of a traditionalbusiness letter, in that they include opening (Move 4) and closing(Move 8) pleasantries, which appear at the beginning and end ofthe message, respectively A typical sequence of moves that occursin many hotel responses is as follows (and is also illustrated by theexamplein th e a p p e n d ix ): (1) (2) (3) (4) Openingpleasantries (Mo ve4) Gratitude( Move1) ApologizeforsourcesofTrouble(Move2) Somecombinationofthefollowing: ProofofAction(Move5) AcknowledgeComplaints/ Feedback(Move6)Referto CustomerReviews(Move7)AvoidanceofReocc urringProblems(Move9) (5) InvitationforaSecondVisit ( Mo ve3) (6) Solicitresponse(Move10) (7) Closingpleasantries (Move8) Whileo pe ning a n d clo sing p lea sa n trie s al wa y s ap pea rin th eir fixedp o s i t i o n s , t h e p o s i t i o n s o f theothermovesaresomewhat Althoughs o m e w h a t s i m i l a r , t h e s e m o v e s a r e n o t i d e n t i c a l i n f u n c t i o n Followingw o r k i n pr a g m at ic s ( BlumKulkaa n d O l s h t a i n , 1984),w e c o n s i d e r M o v e 5,ProofofAction,asanalogouswith“R epair”(i.e.,someexpressionof“we tookaction tofix the problem”), whereas our Move 9,Avoidance of Recurring Problem,would analogous to the category of“Promise of Forbearance”(i.e.,“it won't happenagain.”)Whileinmaterialterms,theclaimmadeinMove may seem to entailsomeaction having taken place,the occurrence of Move and Move in discourseisequallyoptional.Forthisreason,weconsiderthemtobedistinctfunctionalcategor ies morefluid.Ingeneral,Move1(Gratitude)isusuallyfoundbeforeMove2 (ApologizeforSourcesofTrouble),andMoves3 and 10usually appearneartheendofthemessage,rightbeforeMove8(ClosingPleasa ntries).Moves5(ProofofAction),6(AcknowledgeComplaints/ Feedback), (Refer to Customer Reviews) and (AvoidanceofReoccurringProblems)tend to comprise the main body ofthe response, and these four moves are the most variable in theirorderacrossdifferenttexts.Recognizingthisstructure– anditsindividualcomponents– maybeofvaluetostudentslearningtoproducet h e s e t y p e s o f t e x t s Sincerely,Genera lManager[hotelna me] Identicalornearidenticalsyntacticandlexicalpatternsoccurringa c r o s s d i f f e r e n t r e v i e w s , s u g g e s t t h e u s e o f a t e m p l a teora 3.2 Intertextualityandgenericversusspecificresponses AswasnotedinthediscussionofMoves5and7,hotelresponses varyconsiderablyinthedegreetowhich they referback to customers' reviews, and the extent to which they providedetailed,specificexplanationsreplyingtotheissues raised inthosereviews.Ofallthedatacollected,30hotelresponsesprovid ed general responses only without any detailed explanationreferring to the original customers' review The following exampleillustratesth is n o n - s p e c i ficap p ro ac h (22) Thank you very much for sharing your experience here andweapprecaiteyoureffortstoletusknowwherewecandobetter.We havetakenactionsontheareasmentionedinyourcomment.Welookforwar dtobringyouabetterexperienceinthenearfuture Thesetypesofresponsesoftenrepeatthesamelexicalandsynta cticpatterns,andshowlittlevariationacrossmultiplereviews.Itis clearthatthistypeofresponse could apply to awide range of potential complaints In the most extreme case wefoundinourdataset,anidenticalnonspecifichotelresponse(similartoexample22)wasusedfortwoco mpletelydifferentcustomers' reviews about two different types of problems (i.e., onecomplainedonlyaboutthebed;theothercomplained about thegeneral service) The same, or similar, responses are often used bythesameindividuals addressing reviews onbehalfofthesamehotelch ain Thef o l l o w i n g e x a m p l e i l l u s t r a t e s a r e o c c u r r i n g p a t t e r n f o u n d inaninternationalhotelchain,withresponsestoprope rtieslocatedi n a l l o f t h e f o u r c i t i e s i n c l u d e d i n o u r s a m p l e ( F r o m a l l the responses (N21) provided by this particular hotel chain,6 appear with no author signature, of them are signed with aposition title (e.g.,“General Manager”), and include signaturesfromdifferentindividuals.)Inexample23,theunderlin edsentencesappearedinseveraldifferentresponsesfromthishotelchain, suggesting the possibility that either one corporate representative is responding to consumer complaints for hotels locatedin multiple cities, or that different customer service representativesworkingforthesamehotelchainarefollowingabasictemplat e (23) DearS i r / M a d a m : Thank you for taking the time to write a review and tell us aboutyour experience at the [hotelname]Hangzhou I am sorry that yourexperiencedidnotmeetyourexpectations;pleaseallowmetoex pressmy si ncer es tapo lo gi es At[hotelname],westrivetoprovideasuperiorserviceexperiencefor every customer; thereforeyour feedbackis very important tous Your comments concerning the need to renovate the hotel are wellunderstood and indeed[theowner]and[hotelname]will commence withsuchaprogramthisyear We appreciate your sharing your concerns, and it is our hope thatyouwillgiveustheopportunitytobetterserveyouinthenearfuture ẳ copypasteapproach Obviously, non-specic, or generic, ỵ hotelresponses,suchastheexampleabove,canbecreatedwithoutkno wingthespecicdetailsofcustomerreviews.Theyalsocontrastdrama ticallywiththeoriginalcustomers'complaints,whichtend to bequite detailedandspecificabout the nature ofthe problem(s) discussed (Vásquez, 2011, 2013) With their lack ofelaborationonthespecificissuediscussedinthecustomer'sfeedback,th esetypesofvagueandunder-specifiedresponsesmight raise questions about the hotels' claims of their valuing ofcustomerfeedback(claimsfo und in53/80responses) By“intertextuality”here we refer to those hotel responses thatactually makesome reference to comments found in the originalcustomerreview As discussed earlier (move 7,Refer to CustomerReviews), quite a few hotels (38%) did not refer to any of theinformation from the original customer review In contrast, 50/80hotel responsesdid refer to some aspect of the original reviews,but these vary in the degree of detail included Thus, we identifiedtwobasictypesofintertextualstrategies: (1)intertextualresponses which referred briefly to the problem(s) mentioned(sucha s “ then e e d t o r e n o v a t e t h e h o t e l , ”ine x a mple23),and (2) those which provided a more detailed explanation in responseto theproblem(s) discussedintheoriginalreview.Clearly,thisdistinctioni s a rel a tive o n e For thefirst type, hotels referred back briefly to the originalreviews,yettheydidnotprovidedetailedexplanations.When thesereviewsincludedMove5(ProofofAction),the“action”referred to in these types of responses typically is quite general,such as“an investigation is under way,”a variant of which appearsint h ef o l l o wi n g example (24) Your feedback on our guest room has been taken note andwillbeinvestigatedbyourExecutiveHousekeeperandChiefEnginee ring For the second type, 19 out of 50 responses included hotels'explanations for the problems that occurred, as described in theoriginalcustomercomplaints.Inmostofthesecases,hotelsprovid ed an apology along with some additional explanation orjustificationabouttheproblematicissue.For example,thenextexcerpt shows a hotel's post that responds to a customer complainta bo u t a sl o win te rne t c o n n e c t i o n i n t h e h o t el (25) First of all, I would like to apologize for the discomfort youencountered duringyourstayinourhotel.[Move2]We have sincethenu p g r a d e d o u r i n t e r n e t s e r v i c e s a n d o u r p r o v i d e r i s n o w o f f e r i n g alargerbandwidth [Move5]InChina,certainpagesmaytakelongertoappear, and some internationalsites are unavailable [Additionalexplanation] Thoughbothtypesofresponsescanbecharacterizedas“intertextu al”in the sense that they make reference to the originalusergeneratedreview,itisclearthattheydonotprovide thesamelevelofdetail,in eitherexplanationsforwhytheproblemoccurred, or how it is being corrected However, both types doindicatethattheauthorshaveatleastreviewedtheactualcustomer complaints 3.3 “Personalvoice”andclaimingresponsibility:signaturesand pronouns As noted earlier,Closing Pleasantrieswas not one of the mostfrequentm o v e s T h i s i s p e r h a p s d u e t o t h e h e a d e r i n f o r m a t i o n thatappearsonTripAdvisor's“right ofreply”feature for hotels,whichs e r v e s t o i d e n t i f y t h e a u t h o r o f t h e r e s p o n seasarepresentativeofthehotel(asshowninFig.1).However,ofthe49hotel Table4 Frequency offirst person singular and plural pronouns inhotelr es p o n s e s Rank Tokens Pronouns 15 63 70 269 186 131 92 26 24 We Our Us I My Me hotelsd i d n o t p r o v i d e a s p e c i ficn a m e o f t h e a u t h o r o r t h e corp orationaspartofthe ClosingPleasantries mo ve ) (27) With warm regards, [hotelname] HotelM a n a g e m e n t T e a m (28) Bewell, [firstnamelastname] ExecutiveA s s i s t a n t M a n a g e r As discussed in the previous sections, ourfinding that Move 8(ClosingPleasantries)appearswithslightlylessfrequencythanMove 4(OpeningPleasantries)maybepartlyattributedtothewebsitearchite ctureoftheright-to-replyspaceprovidedbyTripAdvisor, which automatically inserts the hotel information atthe top of the responses However, there is quite a bit of variationdemonstrated with respect to signatures in closing pleasantries.Not only did 31 responses include no signature at all, of the 49 thatdidincludeasignature, 14 responses identified the author only interms of his/her corporate role Taken together then, thesefindingindicatethat,inresponsemessagestocustomercomplai nts,information personally identifying the author is not included inover half (i.e., 46) of the responses Rather than identifying theauthor of the message as an individual, the emphasis seems to beona co l l e ct ive ,c o rp o r at e i d e n t it y Thisinterpretation is furthercorroboratedbyawordfrequency list generated via the concordancing software,AntConc(Anthony,2011).Table4showstherelativefrequen ciesoffirstpersonsingularandfirstpersonpluralpronounsthatappea redinthedataset This comparison of pronoun frequencies in the dataset showsthatfirst person plural pronouns,we,us, andour(N586) ¼ occuralmost times more frequently than theirfirst person singularcounterparts,I,me,my(N¼142) Thisfinding indicates that, mostoften,a u t h o r s o f r e s p o n s e s t o c o n s u m e r c o m p l a i n t s referto themselves as a corporate collective However, some exceptionsto this trend can also be observed (e.g., in excerpts 14, 20, 21, 23,25), and in these cases, the use of afirst person singular pronounoften occurs with apologies (i.e.,I am sorry), or with theSolicitResponsemove, where future communication with the individualoffering personal contact actually does require a personal identi-fier It is also interesting to note that several responses demonstratealternationbetweenfirstpersonsingularandpluralreferences –even within a brief stretch of discourse–as can beenseen in excerpts 14, 23, and 25 By and large however, the authorsof hotel responses not personally claim responsibility for theguest's unpleasant travel experiences.4Besides reflecting individualwriters'stylistic preferences,this may alsoreflectthedistributedn a t u r e o f w o r k a n d r e s p o n s i b i l i t y i n t h e h o s p i t ality responses that included Move (Closing Pleasantries), 45 hotelsincluded a signature, either identifying the author as a corporateentity(N¼14),orviaapersonalnameand/orprofession altitle (N¼31),asseenrespectively, inthetwoexamplesbelow.(Four Interestingly, the relative proportions offirst person plural reference, compared tofirst person singular reference, is opposite to that which is typically foundinsp o ke n a n d w r i t t e n r eg i st e rs ( e g , B i b e r e ta l , 9 ) Similar uses of the“business‘we’”have been previously identified in otherformsofbusinesscommunication( e.g., HaggeandKostelick, 1989) industry, as well as perhaps also the distributed nature of onlinereputation management In other words, it is quite possible thatthe authors of such corporate responses may even be geographicallyremovedf ro mth ehot el p ro p e rt y theyarewrit in g a bo u t Conclusions Our analysis of 80 online hotel responses (posted onTripAdvisor,inreplytocustomercomplaints)identifiedatotaloftendistinctmo ves,witheightofthosemovesappearingin themajority of hotel responses Among these, expressions of gratitudeandapologieswerethe mostfrequentmoves.Openingandclosingpleasantries were also quite common (similar to thefindings ofPage(2014)whoexaminedcorporateapologiesonTwitter),suggest ingthatthesemovesfunctionto mark the formality ofthisgenreofCMC.Yet,inspiteofthesesimilarities–andtherelatively formulaic nature of this genre–ourfindings also pointto two related phenomena which exhibit some interesting variabilityacrosscas es Existinga s p a r t o f t h e s a m e g e n r e c h a i n , t h e s e t e x t s a r e intertextually linked to an obvious antecedent: consumer reviews.Yet there is considerable variation in how explicitly businesses'responses signal this intertextual connection Only 19 of the 80responses actually provided detailed explanations about the causeof the problem described in the review, and/or specific steps ofactionsforimprovement.Andalthoughamajorityofhotelresponses did refer back to the original customer complaints tosome extent, a substantial number of responses made only verygeneral mentions of the nature of the problem discussed in theoriginal review More specifically, around one-third of the hotels inthedatasetrespondedtoconsumercomplaintsusinganonspecificapproach.Inmany cases,theauthorsofthesekindsofresponses did not need to actually read the customers' feedback togenerateapologeticresponses.Andweevenobservedseveralinstance s where a representative/(s) from the same hotel chain,writing responses to complaints about hotels in different cities,usedi de n tic al s y n t a c ti c s tr u c tu re s Fromt h e d a t a a v a i l a b l e t o u s , i t i s u n c l e a r w h a t e x a c t l y motivatesthis“nonspecific”approachforrespondingtoonlinereviews It may be the result of an organizational priority whichemphasizes speed and efficiency in posting responses; or it may bean attempt to standardize responsesacrossindividualrepresenta-tives; or it may be a means to lessen the demands of the writingtask for company representatives who are new to the genre (orwhomaybewritinginalanguagewithwhichtheyarenotcompletel ycomfortable)5–orsomecombinationofthe above.This question could be explored in the future, perhaps via inter-views with the representatives from hotel chains who are responsiblefo rpo st in g r es p o n se s to re v i ew s o nl ine Another related, interesting, and perhaps even more important,issuethatthisraiseshastodowithreaders'reactionstobusiness es'responses.Ithasbeenfoundthat60%ofcustomerswhocomplainonline expect a response from the company (Van Noort andWillemsen,2011,p.133).Howarevagueandunderspecifiedrespo nsesperceivedbytheconsumerwhopostedtheoriginalcomplaint? Andhowaretheseresponsesperceivedbyotherconsumers reading them, especially since–asHeyes and Kapur(2012)point out– “the objective is not only (or even primarily) toassuagethataggrieved customer, but the numerous third partieswho are‘overhearing’that conversation online”(p 824)? Certainly,whenconsideredthroughtheperspectiveof“conversational human Aso n e r e v i e w e r h a s p o i n t e d o u t , i t i s p o s s i b l e t h a t E n g l i s h m a y n o t b e the firstl a n g u a g e o f t h e a u t h o r s o f s o m e o f t h e r e s p o n s e s i n o u r s a m p l e voice,”seeinganidenticalornearidenticalresponsepostedinresponse to several different reviews addressing a variety of issuesmightraisequestionsaboutabusiness'ssincerityinthemindsofa tleastsome“overhearing”consumers.Userperceptionsof,andreactionsto,authent iconlinebusinessresponsesrepresentsapressing issue (and one with obvious implications for reputationmanagement),whichawaitsfurtherresearch Besides“conversational human voice”as an effective strategyfor businesses addressing negative comments online, one recentstudy points out that representing employees as individuals mayalso be an effective strategy in online“customer care”(Van Noortand Willemsen, 2011, p 139) However, thefindings of our studyreveal varying degrees of personalization of the author composingthe response text on behalf of the hotel In fact, the majority ofauthorsofresponsesdonotselfidentifyasindividuals.Whenclosing pleasantries are included, the authors of responses mostoften identify themselves as a corporate entity, such as“managementteam”or“salesteam.”Conversely,only39%ofauthorsinclu de some personal information, such as a name or a professional title, in their closings The preference forfirst person pluralpronounsoverfirstpersonsingularpronounsinthesetextsfur thersupportsourobservationthatauthorstendtoemphasizetheircor porate identities over their personal identities when producingthis genre This might be expected, given that individual authorsarewritingonbehalfofalargerorganization.Nevertheless,s everalof these texts also feature some alternation betweenfirst personsingular(I)andfirstpersonplural(we)perspectiveswithin asingle message It would be interesting to examine a larger corpusofsimilardatatoseeifanyclearerpatternsemergeforthose moves (or the specific grammatical constructions) that feature theless-frequentlyused fi rstpersons in gu l ar pr o n o m in a l fo rms Althougho u r s tu d y p r o v i d e s s o m ep r e l i m i n a r y , e mp ir ic al ly based observations about hotels' responses to online reviews, wearecognizantofseverallimitationsofourstudy.Wearewellawarethatourdatasetisbothlimited insizeaswellasrestric tedto a single geographic location (i.e., hotels in China) In addition,many ofthehotelsinthesamplearelarge,well-known,multinationalcorporatechains.Althoughthisfactparticularizesoursa mpleevenfurther,atthesametime,italsoreducesthepossibilityof ourfindingsbeingculturallyidiosyncratic.Large,multinational corporations are likely to employ individuals frommany parts of the world, and it is possible that the authors of thesetextscomefromavarietyofgeographic,culturalandlanguage backgrounds Moreover, we would argue that the communicationpatternswehaveidentifiedare,insomesense,“global, ”withrespectt o t h ef a c t t h a t t h e y are w r i t t e n i n E n g l i s h , a n d i n t e n d e d foraninternationalaudience(insteadofbeingwritteninChinesefor a local audience) We have no reason to believe that our sampleisinanywaynon-representative;yetadditionalresearch isneededtodeterminehowsimilarordifferentthesehotelrespons es are to online consumer reviews posted about hotels inother countries–and ultimately, how generalizeable ourfindingsare to the genre as a whole If future research does corroborate thefindingspresentedhere,thentheymaybehelpfulin providingbusinesscommunicationeducatorswithguidelinesfor teachingthe moves that characterize this particular genre, and for engagingwiths o m eo f th e re l at ed is suesth at o urs tu dy h as rai s ed Asd i s c u s s e d , o u r s a m p l e h a s f o c u s e d o n l y o n h o t e l s f r o mthe higheststarcategories,whichareoftenpropertiesfromlarge,wellknown, multinational corporate chains Our earlier observations indicated that smaller, non-chain hotels tended to post fewerresponses to reviews than larger, chain hotels However it will bebothinterestingandimportantinthefuturetocomparethestrategie s used by representatives from these categories of hotelswith the responses from the hotel types examined here This iscrucialbecausesmallerproperties arenotonlymore likelytohave fewerhumanandotherresourcesinplaceforrespondingtoreviews,b uttheymayalsobemorevulnerablethanlargercorporationst othed e l et e ri o u s e f fe c ts o f n eg at ive e W O M Traditionally, customer complaints were addressed via privatecorrespondencebetweentheconsumerandthebusiness,inap rocesscalled“servicerecovery”(GuandYi,2014).However,eWOMha smadeitpossibleforconsumerstopostnegativecommentsonline,the rebymakingtheircomplaintspublic,andshifting the intended audience to include both the business as wellas other consumers.Businessesresponses appeartobetaking into account this wider audience AsGu and Yi (2014)observe“Thepublic nature of the online recovery effort […] requires the serviceproviders to consider not only how their responses influence thecomplainingcustomersbutalsohowtheyinfluence customerswhoo b s e r v e t h e c o m p l a i n t s a n d t h e m a n a g e m e ntresponses” (emphasis ours) This observation in supported by another study(citedinSparksetal.,2013),inwhichresearchersfoundthat“see ing a management response is important”to the majority ofindividualssurveyed(p.2).Thoughelectronicwordofmouthcannot becontrolled,itisevidentthatitcanandshouldbemanaged(Lookereta l.,2007).Furtherresearchisneededtodetermine how consumers perceive and react to various strategiesusedbybusinessesinrespondingto,andmanaging,custome rdissatisfactioni n a n o n l in ee n v i ro n m en t Appendix.Example moveslabeled of a complete hotel response, with DearMs.Wang,[Move :OpeningPleasantries] ThankyouforchoosingXXXatyourrecentvisittoNanjingandfortakingso me of your valuable time to share your experience on line [Move1 :G t i tu d e] Firstandforemost,pleaseacceptoursincerestapologiesforbeingunablet o meet your expectations during your visit of June 5th [Move2: Apologize for Sources of Trouble] After reviewing your comments,pleasebeinformedthatwehavesharedthemwiththerelatedde partmentheads,i.e.FoodandBeverageManager,ExecutiveHousekeeperandFrontOfficeManagerinorderforthemtotakethenecessarycor rectiveactionsandtrainingtoensurethattheseincidents not occur again [Move 5: Proof of Action; Move 9:Avoidanceof R eoc cu rrin g P ro bl e ms ] Ms.W a n g , w e d o v a lu e y o u r c o m m e n t s a s i t i s t h r o u g h t h e m t h a t weare ableto furtherimproveour service standards and offer youandallourguestsabetterexperiencewheneveryou stay with us [Move6:AcknowledgeComplaints/Feedback] We hope you can giveusanotheropportunitytoprovethatweareuptoourpromisedstandard s.Asagestureofgoodwill,Iwouldliketoofferyouacomplimentaryupgrade to our river view suite 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