The cultural impact on social commerce: A sentiment analysis on Yelp ethnic restaurant reviews

In social commerce, ethnic culture plays an important role in the content and quality perception of customer reviews. This study examined Japanese restaurant reviews in English at Yelp.com and those in Japanese at Yelp.co.jp from a cross-cultural perspective. Using bilingual text mining software, we demonstrate that Japanese customers have significantly different sentiment distribution patterns on four basic attributes of dining experience (food quality, service, ambiance, and price fairness) than Western customers. These findings shed insights on how review contents and ratings may vary between local and foreign customers at multi-national social commerce platforms. Our findings fill a research gap of cultural influence in social commerce.