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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 15:3 (2024) ► pp.400–424

Making up or taunting?

Positive rapport and negative rapport strategies in response to sharing business Airbnb’s online negative reviews: A cross-linguistic study

| Shanxi University,
ORCID logo | Shanxi University,
Online consumer reviews (OCRs) are characteristic of, and play a vital role in, the sharing economy, the new business model for (in particular younger) generations of consumers. Even so, discussions of the pragmatic strategies that sharing businesses employ in response to negative OCRs are still a scarcity in academic literature. The present article makes an original contribution to rapport management studies by examining both the negative and positive rapport management strategies (RMS; Spencer-Oatey 2008) in the responses of British and Chinese Airbnb hosts to 200 negative OCRs in English and 200 negative OCRs in Chinese; among the 400 responses by Airbnb hosts replying to their angry guests’ negative OCRs, there were just 10 negative and 10 positive RMSs. The study also examines similarities and differences between English and Chinese responses to negative OCRs.
Keywords: rapport management, Airbnb, online consumer reviews, positive vs. negative rapports, management strategies and responses
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The age of electronic word-of-mouth
    • 1.2Airbnb and the P2P sharing economy
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Rapport, rapport management and rapport management strategies
    • 2.2Differences between British and Chinese cultures
    • 2.3Research on the online consumer reviews in the peer-to-peer industry
    • 2.4Research on the genre of review responses
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Discourse analysis procedures
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Frequent positive rapport strategies in Airbnb
      • Positive rapport strategy: Apologizing
      • Positive rapport strategy: Appreciating/acknowledgment of the reviewer
      • Positive rapport strategy: Rectifying problems
    • 4.2Unique negative rapport strategies
      • Negative rapport strategy: Referring to positive reviews
      • Negative rapport strategy: Emphasizing market position
      • Negative rapport strategy: Refusing further visits
      • Negative rapport strategy: Accusing reviewers of rude behavior
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1The management of positive rapport/negative rapport
    • 5.2Inter-linguistic and intercultural difference of rapport management strategies
  • 6.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 11 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.21037.fen
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