Analysing Restaurant Complaints Available at Tripadvisor.com: A Study on Local Food Restaurants Located in Mersin and Hatay

Abstract

Tourism industry and the sub-sectors involved in this industry have been growing rapidly day by day and
providing new goods and services for the different type of customers by getting diversified. In this context, local
tastes, attracting considerable interest, have become crucial motivation agents in discovering new destinations
for the visitors. Plenty of studies have revealed that one of the underlying causes of novelty seeking is the desire
for experiencing new and authentic tastes. From this point of view, local food experience of visitors visiting
Mersin and Hatay, which are famous with authentic and unique tastes and have geographical indication, have
been taken into consideration in this research. However, within the scope of the research, only responses of
participants who had unfavorable experience during the consumption have been received for consideration. By
the content analysis method, customer’s negative responses in the light of three or below evaluation score
representing perceived service experience between the dates 01.01.2014 and 23.02.2015 through
www.tripadvisor.com. Accordingly, sample of the study is composed of 35 restaurants 85 responses, 16
business-38 responses from Mersin and 19 business- 47 responses in Hatay. As a result of coding certain
concepts, which are defined through literature review, complaints about local food restaurants have been
identified as “food related problems”, “service delivery and personnel related problems” and “other problems”
respectively. Complaints taking apart under these factors have been principally originated from “taste”,
“personnel behaviors”, “authenticity” and “value for money” problems. The paper has been concluded with
suggestions for future research in addition to implications for theoreticians and practitioners.