However, it is time-consuming to conduct a survey, and such a survey tends to cover a relatively small area region rather than an entire city. In terms of designing a proper questionnaire, researchers can get less biased observations and more detailed information reflecting different aspects of service quality, e.g., food, facilities, tidiness and so forth. Traditionally, survey methods are widely used to collect data for measuring service quality of business venues. On the other hand, Yelp could collect data to reflect service quality of business venues in an efficient and low cost way. Therefore, Yelp offers a potential approach to measuring service quality of business venues at a large geographical scale. By using a voting mechanism, we could use the average star rating to rank a business venue. Normally, there are a number of persons who gave different rating values to the same business venue. Basically, a high star score made by a user indicates a high ranking of venue, meaning the user is very satisfied with the venue whilst a low star score means the user is not. The star score mechanism used in Yelp is similar to the one widely used in ranking hotel. Yelp users can rank business venues by giving a star score (from 1 to 5). 5-Star and 1-Star represents the highest and lowest ranking. There are 5 star ratings from 1-Star to 5-Star with increase in ranking. Specifically, Yelp offers a star-based rating system. Unlike the other LBSNs, Yelp provides a professional way to users. Normally, in those LBSNs users can only select ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ to express their feedbacks after visiting business venues. Although other LBSNs also allow users to comment on business venues, they provide a simpler way to users than Yelp. Reviews of Yelp users on business venues reflect satisfaction of customers with services in those venues. One the one hand, compared to other LBSNs like Foursquare, Google Latitude and Facebook Places, Yelp focuses on crowdsourced reviews on business venues (restaurants, shops, bars, etc.). In very recent years, Yelp is attracting researchers who are interested in service quality of business venues. Lots of researches had been done to demonstrate how to use LBSNs data in different fields: mobility, urban planning, place recommendation and so forth (e.g., ). One the other hand, users can share their information with others or see others’ information, including the information geo-referenced in terms of online social networks. One the one hand, users can geo-reference and time-stamp all their information automatically or manually, including texts, photos, ‘check-ins’ and ‘likes’ in terms of GPS-enabled devices such as smart phones and tablets. LBSNs are combination of location-based service (LBS) and social media. Mapping Yelp’s business venues with ratings provides a new way to understand spatial patterns of service quality of business or public venues at a large spatial scale.Ī growing popularity of smart phones and apps promotes development of location-based social networks (LBSNs). Moreover, although hot spots and cold spots of restaurants and fast foods both tend to be randomly distributed over space, spatial distribution of restaurants’ ratings tends to be more similar to that of bars’ ratings. More specifically, bars within or near the city centre are likely to get high ratings. The empirical results indicate that spatial clusters of high ratings tend to be differently distributed between different categories of Yelp venues. In this study, we undertook an analysis of Yelp ratings in Phoenix, USA. Specifically, we identified clusters of high and low ratings and explored spatial patterns of clusters of high ratings for different venue categories (i.e., restaurants, fast foods and bars). In terms of a spatial analysis of venues’ ratings, this paper explored geographic patterns of ratings of Yelp business venues in a city-wide region. Geo-localized venues could tell researchers where and how good a business venue is. Those reviews could be used to reflect service quality of business venues. Reviews of users on Yelp venues somewhat indicate satisfaction of customers with services of those venues. With popular location-based services on smart phones, users are willing to leave comments on the business venues (e.g., restaurants, shops, bars, etc.) that they visited.
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