The role of online reviews in restaurant selection intentions: A latent growth modeling approach

Abstract

Despite the significant research regarding online reviews, one area remains under investigated: how the trustbehavioral intentions linkage formed by online reviews changes during subsequent restaurant consumption episodes. Using the latent growth curve at three time intervals, this study contributes to the research by highlighting (1) the mean change patterns of three specific review types, (2) the significant change rate between online reviews and trust in restaurants, and (3) the insignificant change rate between all review types and behavioral intentions during subsequent restaurant visits. Our findings showed that while consumers' perceptions initially declined, they rose as consumption experience increased. Although this U-shaped curve appears for both pure text and text reviews with photos, perceptions of rating reviews continued to decline. Additionally, we found that all online review types directly impact increases or decreases in the change rate related to restaurant trust during subsequent visits. Finally, we observed no significant change rates between the three online review types and behavioral intentions.