Understanding online firestorms: Negative word-of-mouth dynamics in social media networks

Social media are, on the one hand, a highly beneficial environment for word-of-mouth (WOM) propagation of new ideas and products, and this has increasingly made them a focus of marketing communications. On the other hand, companies and their brands as well as politicians, governmental institutions, and celebrities have increasingly been facing the impact of negative online WOM and complaint behavior. In reaction to any questionable statement or activity, social media users can create huge waves of outrage within just a few hours. These so-called online firestorms pose new challenges for marketing communications. In this article, we group observations from recent online firestorms, identify related social and economic science theories, and derive generalized factors that form the basis for the proliferation of these dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss the consequences of online firestorms for marketing communications, and offer courses of action for marketers to navigate through crises of negative online WOM.     

Adverse effect of social media on generation Z user's behavior: Government information support as a moderating variable

Social media emerged as a primary source of information among young users, but its severe effect on mental state due to information overload, still an area of concern for the researchers. Generation Z users' addiction to the mobile phone/gadgets is increasing with a rise in social media and consequently their behavioral outcomes have transformed completely. Nowadays behavioral issues including stress, fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’ and ‘phubbing’, anxiety etc. rising each day but the relationship among these issues and information overload is less examined. The social media users are unable to filter the trustworthy information due to its enormous size and thus role of information support from government becomes essential. The current study extends the S-O-R theory exploring relationship between the stimulus of enormous information on the responses generated among the Generation Z such as social media fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety. The findings from a sample of 319 users belonging to Generation Z suggest that social media platforms need to understand user's compulsive usage that is resulting into fatigue and consequently anxiety. The role of government information support on reducing fatigue and anxiety is found to be positive. The relationship between ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety is found significant and shows presence of partial mediation. The study offers significant theoretical and practical implications. It is significant for the service providers and social media platforms to advance interfaces with minimum fatigue for the users and offers information support to the users to reduce stress caused by information load.     

Ambidexterity under digitalization: A tale of two decades of new media at a Swedish newspaper

The digitalization of the newspaper industry represents a significant challenge for incumbent companies to engage new technologies. Many companies in the industry have had to seek new markets through digital technologies to survive. This paper explores how one of the largest Swedish newspapers, Aftonbladet, has strategically embraced new media and new markets. We report a decade of engaged scholarship based on interviews and archival analysis that covers 20 years of strategic acts at the company. We consider this effort as a case of organizational ambidexterity under digitalization. The analysis seeks to extend theoretical understanding of the interrelationships between strategic intent and technological choice. The paper contributes to the understanding of ambidexterity under digitalization by theoretically framing it in terms of strategic acts. The research suggests that digitalization implies a more complex ambidexterity interrelationship between old and new markets and technologies. As digitalization enables the loosening of previously tight couplings, the clear theoretical distinction between old and new, and critically, the unproblematic transition, is brought into question. The paper suggests replacing the notion of an orderly shift from the old to the new with ambidexterity under digitalization as a duality of both old and new undergoing continual reconfiguration.     

Social media and sustainable purchasing attitude: Role of trust in social media and environmental effectiveness

The role of social media in promoting sustainable attitudes is currently understudied. Underpinned by social learning theory, this study unveils the effect of social media usage and browsing on sustainable purchasing attitude, the underlying mechanism, and the boundary condition. Drawing on a sample of 693 experienced respondents analyzed using structural equation modeling, this study reveals that social media usage and browsing have a significant positive association. Both constructs significantly impact sustainable purchasing attitudes with complementary partial mediation of the drive for environmental responsibility. Further, trust in social media and perceived environmental effectiveness significantly moderate the relationships belongs to the browsing and drive for environmental responsibility. Contrary to the theorization, moderating constructs cannot substantially impact the proposed associations of social media usage. In this manner, the present research is innovative and provides valued knowledge to comprehend social media's role in encouraging sustainable attitudes.     

The more others care,the more you share? – Social contagion as a stardom trigger of social media superstars –

Emerging superstars on social media platforms reshape the media landscape. This research analyses social contagion as a stardom trigger of social media superstars (SMS). We argue that in addition to serving as a quality indicator, the number of observed consumers of SMS performances also indicates the suitability of discussing the SMS performances with others. We experimentally manipulated the number of previous views of a YouTube video and find that a high number of previous views significantly increases the perceived quality and the video’s discussion suitability even when holding all objective video characteristics constant. We discuss implications for aspiring SMS and (online) marketers.     

All hype or the real deal? Investigating user engagement with virtual influencers in tourism

Virtual influencer (VI) marketing has become increasingly prevalent on social media with the evolving landscape of digitalisation. However, the use of VIs in tourism has received limited attention in the literature. This study examines salient source and content attributes that stimulate Instagram users’ engagement with VIs in a tourism context. An online discrete choice experiment was designed using key attributes (i.e. source realness, image composition and caption discourse) identified from online focus groups. Survey responses from 309 adult Instagram users in Australia were analysed through discrete choice modelling. The findings indicate that humanlike VIs are preferred over 3D animated VIs and the least preferred influencers are 2D animated VIs. Instagram posts from humanlike VIs that combine images of tourism settings with rational messages attract the most engagement from the audience. Theoretical and practical implications are provided with recommendations for how tourism practitioners can harness VI marketing effectively.     

Real-time co-creation and nowness service: lessons from tourism and hospitality

Brands take advantage of technology, social media and constant connectivity to foster organic consumer engagement and interactions towards co-creating personalised customer service. Real-time service offers dynamic engagement with connected consumers. Brands in tourism and hospitality use technology to dynamically enhance consumer experience through co-creation. The integration of real-time consumer intelligence, dynamic big data mining, artificial intelligence, and contextualisation can transform service co-creation by mobilising recourses in the ecosystem. Nowness service emerges by dynamically engaging consumers in experience cocreation in real time. It has five interconnected characteristics that revolutionise the tourism and hospitality, namely: real-time, co-creation, data-driven, consumer-centric and experience co-creation.     

A netnographic sensibility: developing the netnographic/social listening boundaries

Netnography is constantly evolving as technologies and access to online data develop. Our paper outlines how large data sets of social media can be analysed through bridging the divide between the small, rich and contextually nuanced data that is the hallmark of netnography and the scope and scale of data made possible through social media listening conventions. We define this approach as netnographic sensibility and with the use of a short case study discuss the process through which social media data could be gathered, triangulated and analysed. We orientate the paper around two interrelated questions: investigating how netnographic insights can be extended using social media monitoring tools, and asking how this can be used to add richness and depth to understanding mass consumer realities. Our contribution complements the widely established methodological approach of netnography as we argue that netnography has the capacity and capability to embrace technological advances within the domain of social listening to add value for academic researchers.     

From the blogosphere into the parliament: The role of digital technologies in organizing social movements

In this paper, we present a process model exploring the roles played by digital technologies (DTs) in the organization of collective action (CA) of social movements (SMs) at different points in their lifecycles. The process model, which is based on an exploratory case study of the Italian Five Star Movement, relates the environmental conditions to the working logic, structure and use of DTs at three different stages of the SMs. We explain how these choices are adopted at each stage to address internal and environmental challenges and how they create further challenges to be addressed to pass to the next stage. We further explore the dynamics between the logic of connective and collective action and reflect on the growing need for structures and control. By so doing, our work addresses the need for a better understanding of the coevolution between DTs and organizational structures and of the ways in which DTs are used to mobilize people to sustain CA along the SM lifecycle.     

Value co-creation and social media: Investigating antecedents and influencing factors in the U.S. retail banking industry

This study seeks to examine and unearth antecedents to co-creation behaviours within a U.S. retail banking context. A critical aspect for marketing managers and academics alike, co-creation has a strong influence on tangible factors such as profit and intangible factors such as referrals, satisfaction and feedback. Antecedents were identified as trust, customer engagement and participation attitude whilst social media usage was a consumer characteristic identified as influencing co-creation. Data was collected from 489 U.S. retail banking customers via an online survey. The data was analysed via structural equation modelling. The findings indicate that customer engagement influences trust, co-creation and participation attitude. Participation attitude was found to influence trust and co-creation but trust had no direct effect on co-creation. The study further found that social media usage intensity influenced co-creation behaviours. The findings contribute in three ways. First, this is one of the first studies to scrutinise participation attitude in an attempt to explain co-creation behaviours for U.S. banks over social media. Second, identification of precursors to value co-creation has been ascertained in a U.S. retail banking social media context. Third, the study additionally contributes to the findings that social media usage has a moderating effect in value co-creation and offers a potential segmentation strategy.