Eating in a digital society: The influence of online communities in the food service sector

Online communities can connect potential diners with many other diners and evolve during time and with the daily contributions of users, thus constantly changing. This research aims to better understand the prosumers’ use of social media (i.e. people that are both consumers and social media users and that contribute to create digital contents) in choosing a restaurant and/or reviewing it online. In particular, we want to investigate if prosumers’ characteristics or habits, such as frequency of going to a restaurant or willingness to try new restaurants, can influence their use and perception of social media, such as looking for information, writing feedbacks, and trust online reviews. In this explorative study we adopted a quantitative methodology by using a survey on 315 Millennials prosumers. Theoretical and managerial implications are also developed.