Does Cultural Distance affect Online Review Ratings? Measuring International Customers' Satisfaction with Services Leveraging Digital Platforms and Big Data

The advent and development of digital platforms has helped enhance the international visibility of brands, products and services, and has also introduced a proliferation of online reviews. This study develops a big data analysis of customer online reviews of hospitality services to gauge the extent to which the cultural distance among service providers and their customers infuences online review ratings. By examining almost 715,000 online reviews written by hotel customers from more than 100 diferent nationalities, the efect of national cultural diferences among service customers and providers (namely cultural distance) on online review ratings is innovatively scrutinized. The paper, by considering reviewers’ behavioral features, demographics, and trip-related factors, reveals that the efect of national cultural distance on online review ratings is negative. Several implications for practitioners are also discussed.