EXPRESS: Bridging Research and Practice: Strategies for Managing Negative Online Reviews

Negative online reviews are persistent, platform-amplified signals that can trigger information-driven reputational crises, often paracrises. Yet online reputation management (ORM) research remains fragmented and underrepresents strategies firms use in practice. Grounded in crisis communication theory and triangulating academic, practitioner, corporate, legal, and regulatory evidence, we develop and validate a hierarchical taxonomy of 17 ORM strategies organized into three macro logics: Micro-engagement, addressing focal reviews; Rebuild, rebalancing the evaluative climate; and Visibility, managing exposure through attention control and algorithmic salience. Citation-network construct tests validate the taxonomy’s scholarly structure: shared group membership nearly triples citation odds after group-level controls in a balanced dyad design (N = 5,115; OR = 2.922, 95% CI [1.889, 4.521]). A cosine-similarity topology identifies the most proximate groups, and a construct-level merge diagnostic rejects collapse on objective, strategy class, mechanism, ethical/legal profile, and observability, supporting the 17-group structure. The taxonomy shows that research concentrates on Micro-engagement and Rebuild, whereas Visibility practices (generic naming, decoy websites, and search-result engineering) remain under-theorized. Because Visibility tactics reshape information accessibility, they can suppress negative content while dampening positive signals and reducing transparency. We provide a foundation for cumulative research and a decision map for managers, platforms, and policymakers navigating platform-mediated review crises.