The cultural impact on social commerce: A sentiment analysis on Yelp ethnic restaurant reviews

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Abstract

In social commerce, ethnic culture plays an important role in the content and quality perception of customer reviews. This study examined Japanese restaurant reviews in English at Yelp.com and those in Japanese at Yelp.co.jp from a cross-cultural perspective. Using bilingual text mining software, we demonstrate that Japanese customers have significantly different sentiment distribution patterns on four basic attributes of dining experience (food quality, service, ambiance, and price fairness) than Western customers. These findings shed insights on how review contents and ratings may vary between local and foreign customers at multi-national social commerce platforms. Our findings fill a research gap of cultural influence in social commerce.

Introduction

We frequently observe challenges in cross-cultural service replication, provision, and consumption. In 1983, on a business trip to Italy, Howard Schultz found that Italian coffee bars were not just supplying coffee but “camaraderie” or a social corner for neighbors. This inspired him, and he vowed to replicate such an experience in the United States. He eventually transformed Starbucks from a small coffee bean reseller into a worldwide social, cultural, and business icon [1]. Thirty years later, however, most Italians still do not consider Starbucks remotely comparable to their native counterpart.1 Schultz realizes he still has a long way to go to completely replicate that authentic Italian experience. In another instance, Americanized Asian restaurants are not considered authentic by native Asian customers, such as the case of Chop Suey [2]. Recipes modified to local taste preferences are an example of confluences of food, service, and restaurant ambiance between the origin and adapter.

The present-day consumerism and sharing economy may mitigate the above challenges. For example, the popularity of social commerce allows consumers with different cultural backgrounds to share their preferences and experiences on the same platform or through the same medium on the Internet. Reviews posted on online shopping portals (e.g., Amazon) or traveling portals (e.g., TripAdvisor and Yelp) provide businesses with useful insights. As a result, a consumer in Europe or Asia could purchase an item from Amazon based on the recommendation of previous buyers in North America. A Western traveler could use rating guidance from Yelp to find a fine local restaurant in Japan. Millennials from China could travel with the confidence that Airbnb would help them find a bed in which to sleep, no matter where they went.

In this paper, we demonstrate that there is still a shortfall in this social commerce cornucopia [3,4]. The culture has an impact on social commerce even when we can smooth out information asymmetry by sharing or exchanging our experience online. Specifically, through bilingual text analysis of 76,704 Western and 56,159 Japanese Yelp reviews on 10 popular Japanese food entrée items, we found that customers with different cultural backgrounds (Western vs. Japanese) have different sentiments and standards of rating regarding the food, service, ambiance, and price fairness of Japanese restaurant services. Such differences in sentiment indicate that a popular Japanese restaurant favored by Japanese customers may not necessarily receive the same preference by visiting Western customers. Even for a Japanese restaurant favored by both Western and Japanese customers, their specific preferences are likely different.

Such cultural impact can be easily validated in other service sectors as well as online shopping. Thus, all stakeholders in social media-facilitated social commerce, including customers, product/service providers, and platform/info brokerage operators, have to assess correctly the cultural influence when using social commerce platforms or engaging in social commerce initiatives.

For the remainder of the paper, we present the theoretical background and hypotheses of this study and then describe our research method and findings. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of culture-induced differences in sentiment on social commerce in general.

Section snippets

Social commerce

Social commerce is defined as commerce activities mediated by social media. In the context of the Internet, social commerce is a relatively new online platform that allows consumers to share information, experience, and commentary about products and services [[5], [6], [7]]. Compared with traditional electronic commerce, in which the Internet only serves as a commerce transaction channel, the benefit of social commerce is aptly summarized in The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, who

The data set and preparation

Launched in 2004 by two former PayPal employees, Yelp is one of the leading online tourism social commerce portals. It hosts a website as well as mobile platform for restaurant customers to share their dining experience, to socialize with each other. Yelp expanded into Europe and Asia in 2010 and has 135 million monthly visitors and 95 million reviews as of 2016. It has a market capitalization of $3.4 billion as of 2017.

Because Yelp is the leading restaurant review platform in the world, it has

Cultural influence on review sentiments

The data analysis indicated that there were explicit differences in both positive and negative sentiment emphases on all four aspects of reviews between Western (mainly U.S.) and Eastern (Japanese) customers (Table 2). Specifically, when Japanese customers post a favorable review, the sentiments among the four aspects, in decreasing order of importance, are food quality, price fairness, ambiance, and service, whereas Western customers prioritize a different order of food quality, service,

Cultural impacts on social commerce

In management literature, there are considerable studies on cultural challenges by multinational corporations, from efforts of acculturation to hosting culture by such corporations to remain competitive in a foreign market [65,66]. The cultural impacts on marketing and IT have also been explored by researchers in their respective disciplines [[67], [68], [69]]. However, there is relatively little research that explores the cultural impacts on social commerce, essentially a blending of

Conclusion

This study demonstrated that national culture plays an important role in shaping customer reviews as well as their perception of what is considered a quality review. When it comes to contributing to Japanese ethnic restaurant reviews, we found that Japanese reviewers place more overall emphasis on food quality, more positive sentiment on price fairness, and more negative sentiment on ambiance than Western reviewers. The perception of review helpfulness by customers is also influenced by

Acknowledgement

This research is funded by the University Research Council (URC) Competitive Research Grant #601162 at DePaul University.

Makoto Nakayama is Associate Professor at College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM) in DePaul University. Makoto holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles and an MBA from University of Texas at Austin. Prior to moving into academe, he served as a software engineer on operating systems, a corporate business planning staff member focusing on technologies, and a product marketing manager on NetWare products. His research interests include online consumer behaviors, text analyses

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    Makoto Nakayama is Associate Professor at College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM) in DePaul University. Makoto holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles and an MBA from University of Texas at Austin. Prior to moving into academe, he served as a software engineer on operating systems, a corporate business planning staff member focusing on technologies, and a product marketing manager on NetWare products. His research interests include online consumer behaviors, text analyses on online consumer reviews, and business intelligence. His papers appeared in Information & Management, Journal of Information Technology, Electronic Markets, and proceedings of international conferences.

    Yun Wan is Professor of Computer Information System, and Directors of Graduate Computer Information Systems (MS-CIS) Program and undergraduate BAAS Program at School of Arts and Sciences in University of Houston-Victoria. Dr. Wan’s primary research interests are electronic commerce and the Internet. He also studies artificial intelligence, decision support systems, knowledge management, enterprise systems Integration, and intelligent agent design. He serves as Editorial Board member for International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector (IJISSS) and Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations (JECO). He is a columnist for Communications of the China Computer Federation (CCCF) since 2013. Wan received his Ph.D. in MIS from University of Illinois at Chicago, B.E. in Software Engineering, B.S. in Economic Management from University of Science and Technology of China.

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