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Purpose – The purpose of this research is to examine why and when restaurant consumers use and contribute user-generated reviews. This research is needed to determine the relevance of user-generated restaurant reviews in the current marketplace. Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology is based on a quantitative approach, and focused on current Yelp.com users as its population. Questions focused on the amount of usage, motives for usage, level of trust, users’ tendencies to seek novelty in restaurants and motives for contribution. Findings – Users tend to trust the reviews on Yelp.com and engage in the community aspects of the platform. Yelp.com users also are altruistic in their motivation for contributing reviews to Yelp.com. Yelp.com users who access it tend to act on the information found within the reviews. Originality/value – Research articles have focused on user-generated reviews in the past; however, few have examined motivations of using and posting restaurant reviews. The value of conducting research comes from being able to understand the importance of user-generated restaurant reviews for customers in a comprehensive manner.

The quality of a hotel can be evaluated by a series of stakeholders. Information can come from those who habitually evaluate or rate hotels (i.e., experts), from those who visit a hotel as part of their travel plans (i.e., consumers), and from those who work within the hotel or its corporate organization (i.e., internal stakeholders). This study focuses on the ways in which hotel General Managers use feedback from consumers and experts to improve or sustain service quality. In an environment of information overload, hotel management often must decide which sources to value the most and which to value the least. This study explored the amount of value GeneralManagers place on such information. If given a similar service experience, whether consumers and experts would provide a similar rating is not clear. The present study explored whether a relationship existed between the perceptions of consumer feedback and customer satisfaction scores. Finally, similarities and differences between the various sources of feedback were studied.

a b s t r a c tFood safety events threaten not only consumers' health, but also the value of associated firms. While previous studies examined the impact of food safety events on consumer demand for products, little attention has been paid to the impact on the market value of firms. Using the event study method (ESM), this study investigated abnormal returns (ARs) and cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) of firms associated with 40 food safety events over the past 25 years in the U.S. The results of this study demonstrated the magnitude and duration of the impact of food safety events on firm value. Moreover, firm-specific factors (past history and firm size) and situational factor (media attention) were found to influence the magnitude of the impact. This study contributes to the hospitality literature by extending the knowledge of the impact of food safety events and its practical implications for effective crisis management strategies for food-related firms.