Great restaurant, I will post about it! The Influence of Social Media in the Food Service Sector

This explorative paper aims to better understand the impact of social media in choosing a restaurant, the influence of e-WOM and the information that prosumers (i.e. people that are both consumers and users) mainly rely on for choosing a restaurant. Furthermore, we want to investigate users’ behavior in writing a feedback and their perception of trustworthiness and credibility of online reviews. Finally, we argue that there are some prosumers’ characteristics that may impact their behavior in writing a feedback and in looking for online information and reviews regarding a restaurant. The aim of the study is explorative, thus the methodology that we used is an explorative survey to assess the main topics of interest concerning prosumers behaviors in searching for a restaurant and rating their experience especially considering the use of social media. From our analysis we propose some research propositions that are linked to the previous literature and to the results of our explorative survey. Finally, we highlight some relevant theoretical and managerial implications of our study.