Social media complaints and negative eWOM

Word-of-mouth, shortened as WOM, is proven to be the most effective marketing source that influences customer behavior including for example its impact on awareness, expectations and attitudes. In addition, WOM is not only a brand, product or service focused opinion of a consumer but it can also be an opinion of the organization itself. WOM can influence fellow-consumers either in positive or negative, yet negative message has more powerful impact on customers. It is believed that satisfaction derives positive WOM whereas imbalance between expectation and outcome motivates to spread negative WOM. (Buttle 1998, 242-243, 248) Whereas Singh (1990, 13) stated that spreading negative word-of-mouth and customer exits are less common if the company has good image on solving service failures. WOM has more power on service related decision making process than if customer seeks for a new product. Moreover, if customer is in doubt about a product or service, in most cases the perceived risk is reduced by searching WOM from other consumers. (Buttle 1998, 250)

Social influence theory introduced by Latané in 1981, explains that the presence of other individuals influences individual’s behavior whereas researcher Zajonc concluded in 1965 that people are more willing to express strong emotions when surrounded by other people.

(Zajonc 1965 & Latané 1981; cited in Schaefers & Shamari 2015, 1) In addition, Schaefers

& Shamari (2015, 2) noted that being virtually surrounded by others is relatively new research area, thus they provided four separate studies that investigated virtual presence in various situations including satisfaction with complaint handling for example. They found that resulting from customer awareness of the power of social media has increased complaining since others are able to see whether the service recovery was implemented successfully or not. (Schaefers & Shamari 2015, 12). Social sharing, which is an emotion-driven behavior of individuals occurs when one is eager to seek other individuals to share emotions to achieve social attention, rise empathy or both simulating and strengthening ties with social groups. (Rimé 2009, 81-82)

Balaji et al. (2016) studied factors behind negative WOM behavior on social media, which also included separating word of mouth into three categories: WOM, eWOM and sWOM (social media word of mouth). According to authors sWOM is a new form of eWOM that differs in terms of anonymity as discussants are identifiable, social network sites are more limited not only geographically but also as people have more intense discussion groups among mutual interests and perceived risk associated WOM is higher on social media.

(Balaji et al. 2016, 529)

Table 1 demonstrates comparison of WOM categories Balaji et al. (2016) created. Whereas Eisingerich, Chun, Liu, Jia & Bell (2015, 120) defined sWOM as “electronic word-of-mouth on social sites”. Even though both definitions (eWOM and sWOM) have been used on social media studies, this study adopts definition eWOM when describing word of mouth on social media.

Table 1: Comparison between WOM, eWOM and sWOM (Balaji et al. 2016, 529) Receivers  Individuals  Individuals, small

groups and public

Online customer to customer interactions have become major supplement to traditional consumption and social behavior (Kozinets 1999, 253). Vaerenbergh, Vermeir & Larivière (2013) conducted a research based on “learning and attribution theory”, where the aim was to find if observing other customers’ service recovery outcomes has an impact on observer’s satisfaction or buying behavior in future. The results confirmed that by observing failed service recovery the observer is affected negatively, yet positive service recovery outcomes do not affect the observer when compared to error-free service encounters. (Vaerenbergh et al. 2013, 495)

According to Fu, Ju & Hsu (2015, 617) eWOM has a unique influence on customer behavior compared to WOM for several reasons; traditionally exit has been seen as economic while voice as a political action whereas eWOM not only presents political voice but also has a huge economic effect as it may change other consumers’ purchase behavior. As eWOM is easy to both observe and track, customers are concerned about their own reputation which

may affect their voice online. (Ibid.) Moreover, eWOM is a social act often arising from the need to help others by recommending a good service or by warning to avoid a bad one. (Fu et al. 2015, 617)

Chamboux et al. (2012, 22) defined three primary reasons behind the public outrage on social media channels as they demonstrated that “harm, fear of harm and threatened values” drive customers to voice their dissatisfaction out loud. Public anger may increase customer awareness on their incapability of unjust treatment which put companies’ actions at a high risk. When these complaints are taken seriously and handled carefully, companies are able to have positive influence on these disappointed customers by listening to them and their suggestions to fix the situation. According to authors, it is critical to listen first before any action is taken since this gives the customers a chance to impress themselves and makes the company look more sympathetic. (Ibid.)

As the opposite from online environment where service experiences are easy to access, it is not as common to witness customer complaints offline. (Cheung & Lee 2012, 218) As it is widely known, bad news tend to travel fast whereas spotting negative messages belongs to the human nature to avoid disadvantages (Chamboux et al. 2012, 24). Poorly handled social media crisis may not only affect the company’s reputation but also has a great influence on market share, thus the efficiency of social media should not be underestimated.

(Manika et al. 2016, 1) In addition, the companies that are able to maintain or increase satisfaction are more likely to have supporters and good recommendations. If a customer is committed to a company the person is willing to speak up for them. (Amine 1998, 313-314)

Bronner & de Hoog (2011) studied eWOM behavior among Dutch vacationers on vacation review sites. As the result including both positive and negative expressions, eWOM communication motives were categorized into five motivation categories: 1. Self-directed (e.g. self-expression, impressing others, revenge), 2. Helping others (e.g. assisting other consumers), 3. Social benefits (e.g. to share experiences or contact others in similar situations), 4. Consumer empowerment (e.g. companies are more willing to change, convenience) and 5. Helping companies (e.g. the company should be supported). They also noted that the influence to share experiences on either company or consumer generated sites originates from personal benefits or from the need to help others. The comments on company generated sites were more negative and aimed for personal benefit compared to consumer generated review sites. (Bronner & de Hoog 2011, 21, 24) Whereas Xu, Fen,

Yap & Hyde (2015) studied online interactions between customers after service failure and found complainants to act as help seekers, story tellers, instigators (i.e. empowering other customers) and itinerants (e.g. warning other customers), while repliers were helpers, listeners, educators and ironists. (Xu et al. 2015, 437).

As can be seen, motivations that lie behind social media complaining and negative eWOM behavior are multi-dimensional concepts. These triggers for social media behavior among customers are summarized in Table 2, where motives are separated into three categories.

In more detail, benefits can either be personal where complaint is voiced only for self-interest purposes whereas social benefits aim to help other customers or to interact with them. The last category includes benefits that profit the company as customers may raise to defend the company they are committed to.

Table 2: Triggers for eWOM on social media

Category Motive Action

 Solving the problem without company assistance

 Tips and support from others Need to empower other

consumers

 Engaging other consumers negatively

 Influencing other people to have power over the company

 Revenge through third parties Need for easy

communication

 Immediate response

 Having answers from the company

 Cost-effective way to communicate

 Convenient way to communicate

Social benefits

Need to help others  Warning other consumers

 Concerns for other consumers

Social interaction

 Contacting other customers in the same situation

 Sharing experiences

 Telling stories, entertain others Company benefits Willingness to help the

company to improve

 Supporting good company

 Willingness to help the company to improve

(Amine 1998; Harrison-Walker 2001; Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004; Ward & Ostrom 2006;

Zaugg 2006; Rimé 2009; Grégoire et al. 2010; Chamboux et al. 2012; Bronner & de Hoog 2011; Verhagen et al. 2013; Balaji et al. 2015; Xu et al. 2015)

As Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004, 51) concluded it depends on the person what kind of benefits one is searching for. In other words, complainer may have self-directed motives but at the same time person is interested to help others or the company itself.

Negative communication that is proven to have greater impact compared to positive spreads all over social media in seconds. If a message goes viral, even though the failure happened offline, it may affect company’s reputation worldwide. (Chamboux et al. 2012, 24) Once negative eWOM spreads among social media users and if the discussion gets active enough the company may lose control over the messages. (Grégoire et al. 2015, 173-174) In the worst case scenario the message can capture media’s attention on the unfavorable situation and cause irreversible damage. Even when the conversation on social media goes off the rails, companies should keep their comments appropriate. The worst thing that company can do is to delete the unfavorable message as that could be the starting point for public outrage. When it comes to messages that are highly emotional, companies should appreciate the values of the complainants’ by replying respectfully on the sensitive subject.

(Chamboux et al. 2012, 26)