Thematic framework of online review research: A systematic analysis of contemporary literature on seven major hospitality and tourism journals

The purposes of this study are to synthesize the current research findings reported in major hospitality and tourism journals and to discuss the knowledge gaps where additional research endeavors are needed.

A systematic review approach was adopted to analyze 67 research articles about online reviews that were published between January 2000 and July 2015 in seven major hospitality and tourism journals.

This study presents a thematic framework of online review research, which was advanced by integrating the interactions among quantitative evaluation features, verbal evaluation features, reputation features and social features of online reviews with important outcomes of consumer decision-making and business performance. The thematic framework helps researchers identify the areas in extant hospitality literature of online reviews and point out possible directions for future studies.

The systematic review approach has a qualitative nature, where relevant literature was interpreted based on the authors’ domain knowledge and expertise.

Practitioners can gain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic relationships among the key influential factors in online reviews, as presented in the thematic framework of online review research. Accordingly, managers will be able to develop effective strategies to leverage the positive impacts of online reviews to the business outcomes.

This systematic review synthesizes the findings reported in most recent publications (January 2000-July 2015; also including “Online First” articles) in seven major hospitality and tourism journals and develops an integrated research framework, anchoring on four meta-research questions and showing the dynamic relationships among the key players/factors/themes in online review research. This framework provides a visual diagram to practitioners for a better understanding of the relevant literature and assists researchers in developing new research questions for future studies.