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Article published In: Conflict Talk in Spanish Digital Interactions
Edited by Lucía Fernández-Amaya
[Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 13:1] 2025
► pp. 72–99

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When dissatisfactory experiences turn into conflict

A contrastive study of negative Spanish product and experience-based reviews on Trustpilot

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad Pablo de Olavide
Published online: 30 April 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00104.her
Abstract
Online reviews have partly become a complaints channel in which posters vent their negative feelings (Henning-Thurau, Thorsten, Kevin P. Gwinner, Gianfranco Walsh, and Dwayne D. Gremler. 2004. “Electronic Word-of-Mouth via Consumer-Opinion Platforms: What Motivates Consumers to Articulate Themselves on the Internet?”. Journal of Interactive Marketing 18 (1): 38–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), but the contents, as well as the way posters express their opinions, may vary depending on the type of review, the platform, and the consumers’ expectations, among others. This study explores 600 negative reviews in Spanish, posted to the outsourced review site Trustpilot about three different companies: Zara, Airbnb, and Travelgenio. The aim of this study is to examine: (1) the themes that posters raise as the source of complaint or conflict; and (2) the impoliteness formulae (. 2016. “Impoliteness Strategies”. In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, ed. by Alessandro Capone, and Jacob L. Mey, 421–445. Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) found in the three datasets. The results show that reviews are structured around a limited set of themes and formulae, which range from rather descriptive evaluations that report moderate dissatisfaction (Zara reviews) to highly aggressive reviews related to communication problems and significant loss of money and time (Travelgenio).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1A classification of online review platforms
      • 2.1.1Business-to-person, business-to-consumer, and peer-to-peer platforms
      • 2.1.2Insourced and outsourced review platforms
      • 2.1.3Product and experience-based review platforms
    • 2.2Thematic categories in OCRs
    • 2.3When dissatisfaction turns into anger: Impoliteness and conflict in online reviews
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Method and framework
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Thematic analysis
    • 4.2Impoliteness and conflict in OCRs
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (51)
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