UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES OF PAKISTANI RESTAURANTS: A GENRE ANALYSIS OF GOOGLE REVIEWS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19104056Keywords:
Google Reviews, Genre Conventions, Move Analysis, Metadiscourse FrameworkAbstract
This study investigates Google reviews of restaurants in Pakistan to highlight how customers articulate their dining experiences and evaluations. While existing literature has examined the effects of online reviews on consumer behavior and the structural characteristics of review genres, few studies have focused on understanding the specific genre conventions of restaurant reviews in the Pakistani context, where social influences considerably affect representations of approval or disapproval (Ahmad & Mahmood, 2017; Filieri et al., 2015). By employing Swales’ Move Analysis (1990) and Hyland’s Metadiscourse Framework (2005), this research aims to identify the rhetorical moves and linguistic strategies utilized in the Google reviews. A qualitative analysis was conducted on a total of 100 Google reviews, uncovering distinct structural patterns in the language that reveal cultural shades and nuances. The results suggest that understanding these genre conventions can develop restaurant marketing strategies by aligning them with local consumer expectations, ultimately contributing to improved customer engagement and satisfaction.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Umar Waqar Azim, Rahat Sohail (Author)

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