Consumer Responses to Conflict-Management Strategies on Non-Profit Social Media Fan Pages

Denitsa Dineva, Jan Breitsohl, Brian Garrod and Philip Megicks

Journal of Interactive Marketing, 2020, vol. 52, issue C, 118-136

Abstract: Past research has demonstrated that consumer-to-consumer (C2C) conflicts, here defined as uncivil social interactions between consumers, can have a negative impact on consumers’ engagement in social media fan pages (SMFPs). Little is known, however, about how best to manage such conflicts, and this is particularly true in the non-profit context. This paper follows a mixed-method approach in order to address this research gap. Study 1 uses a netnography of a non-profit organization (NPO) to examine how it manages C2C conflicts on its SMFP. Five different conflict-management strategies are identified: non-engaging, censoring, bolstering, educating, and mobilizing. These findings inform Study 2, an online experiment to test how different strategies affect consumers’ attitudes towards the conflict-management approach itself and towards the NPO’s social responsibility. Study 2 also accounts for the moderating effect of the conflict content, differentiating between whether a conflict relates to a consumer’s self-benefit or the benefit to others. Our results offer insights for practitioners into preferable content management strategies when consumers engage in different types of conflict on social media platforms.

Keywords: Conflict management; Customer misbehavior; Uncivil consumer-to-consumer communication; Social media fan pages; Non-profit organizations; Self and others benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joinma:v:52:y:2020:i:c:p:118-136

DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2020.05.002

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