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WEBCARE LITERATUURLecture 1
Online conversation and corporate reputation: a two-wave longitudinal study on the effects
of exposure to the social media activities of a highly interactive company
Dijkmans, Kerkhof, Buyukcan-Tetik & Beukeboom
The availability of social media has changed the way organizations and consumers interact.
Social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) enable the publics to complain to or
compliment organizations. The main difference between traditional media and social media lies
in the interactive and participatory character of social media. Traditional media utilizes one-way
communication, while social media has more potential to enable two-way communication.
Exposure to the social media activities of companies, particularly when a conversational human
voice is perceived, may affect the impressions of organizations or brands, and may be different
from the impressions people get from exposure to traditional media.
Does exposure to the interactive social media activities of a company over time lead to a more
positive corporate reputation? Is this relation mediated over time by the perceived level of a
company’s conversational human voice?
Corporate reputation
Corporate reputation = ‘a cognitive representation of a company’s actions and results that
crystallizes the firm’s ability to deliver valued outcomes to its stakeholders’. Corporate
reputation is built upon six dimensions; emotional appeal, products & services, vision &
leadership, workplace environment, social & environmental responsibility and financial
performance.
Mass media play an important role in shaping corporate reputation. Negative publicity can
negatively affect corporate reputation, whereas news about the successes of companies – such
as higher profits – can improve reputation.
Conversational human voice
One way to motivate consumers to seek continuing relationships with companies, is to exhibit
not only competence but also humanness and warmth, by communicating in a human style and
incorporating a conversational human voice.
Conversational human voice = an engaging and natural style of organizational communication as
perceived by an organization’s publics based on interactions between individuals in the
organization and individuals in publics.
Utilizing a personal human voice when communicating online led to higher user satisfaction
ratings than impersonal communication. Thus, by employing CHV, a company can demonstrate
that it isn’t just a remote corporation that only produces and sells, but that there are ‘real people’
behind the scene that genuinely want to achieve customer satisfaction and meet the needs of the
consumer. So, the conversational human voice mediates the effect of exposure to a company’s
social media activities on consumers’ perceived corporate reputation.
Conclusion
This study shows a positive reputational effect of consumers’ exposure to a company’s social
media activities, and the mediating role of CHV in this relation. Furthermore, corporate
reputation plays an important role in the achievement of business objectives. Thus, as a
company, being able to improve perception of corporate reputation by employing social media
activities and gaining exposure for these activities ahs scholarly as well as managerial relevance.
,Moreover, with its social media activities, a company can evoke positive electronic worth of
mouth, which can further strengthen its reputation.
Another finding was that CHV mediates the relation between consumers’ level of exposure to
company social media activities and perception of corporate reputation. So, to enhance
perception of corporate reputation, using CHV in online company communication is of growing
importance – for a number of reasons;
High level of CHV in social media activities foster dialogic relationships which are
effective in building a relationship with consumers.
Employing CHV creates interactivity in communications, which may have positive
relational consequences.
By communicating with CHV, a virtual online company-consumer relation may be
evaluated more easily as a ‘real life’ relation by consumers. Interactivity and openness
help to build feelings of parasocial interaction.
The impact of new media on customer relationships
Hennig-Thurau, Malthouse, Friege….
The digital innovations of the last decade made it effortless, second nature, for audiences to talk
back and talk to each other. New media have also empowered them to promote and distribute
their own offers – retailer on eBay, producer/director on YouTube, author on Wikipedia, etc.
User-generated content has become a mass phenomenon. This development threatens
established business models. But at the same time it also creates extensive opportunities for
new business models.
New media = websites and other digital communication and information channels in which
active consumers engage in behaviours that can be consumed by others both in real time and
long afterwards regardless of their spatial location.
Characteristics of new media:
Digital
o There are virtually no costs for producing extra copies of digital products and
individuals can easily distribute their creations to a global audience.
Pro-active
o Consumers use new media to contribute to all parts of the value chain.
Visible
o Consumers’ new media activities can be seen by others.
Real-time and memory
o New media can be accessed by consumers at the time they are produced,
allowing consumers to share experiences in real time. But messages are often
also available indefinitely for years in the future.
Ubiquitous
o New media allow consumers to reach (and be reached by) other consumers and
companies almost anywhere at any time through mobile devices.
Networks
o Consumers use new media to participate in social networks, which enable them
to create and share content, communicate, and build relationships.
Traditionally companies actively influence customer relationships through their marketing
actions, and through public relation. Customers were passive ‘receivers’ of marketing and media
information and companies had almost complete control over the brand-shaping messages.
,Today, the flow of information about brands has become multidirectional, interconnected, and
difficult to predict. Marketers now participate in a ‘conversation’ about the brand. Managing
customer relationships is like playing pinball.
New media phenomena:
Information and services
o Consumers today dedicate substantial time producing and consumer new
multimedia content. However, very little is known about consumer behaviour
with regard to new multimedia products. As advertising constitutes the
backbone of many brand relationships, marketers should be interested in
learning how new multimedia content affects the consumption of traditional
media such as TV.
o Customer interactions: a fundamental issue is understanding what types of
business models will succeed for multimedia sites.
o Digital consumer articulation: consumer use new media for sharing comments
and reviews about services and products and the companies that produce them.
New media makes such articulations – called electronic word-of-mouth EWOM –
accessible to online and even offline shoppers.
o Consumer interactions: a major challenge for companies is to develop
appropriate response strategies to negative EWOM.
o Customers as retailers: new media provide consumers with extensive
opportunities to become retailers themselves.
Technologies
o The use of search bots has changed the way consumers obtain information about
products, services, people and firms.
o Shopping bots are price comparison services that enable consumers to easily and
instantly compare prices for a product at multiple retailers. They increase price
transparency and provide utilitarian consumer benefits.
o Mobile phones are becoming traveling companions for consumers,
accompanying them wherever they go. These trends enable marketing to reach
large numbers of consumers on their most personal communication device.
o New media allows companies to make use of collaborative filtering and related
techniques that unlock ‘swarm intelligence’.
New media require a shift in marketing thinking – consumers have become highly active
partners, serving as customers as well as producers and retailers, being strongly connected with
a network of other consumers. Managing customer relationships in the era of new media
resembles pinball playing, with extensive information being available on brands and products
which can multiply, but also interfere with the companies’ marketing messages (such as
bumpers do when playing pinball) and make it more complex to control brand images and
relationship outcomes such as customer equity.
Online damage control: the effects of proactive versus reactive webcare interventions in
consumer-generated and brand-generated platforms
van Noort & Willemsen
Consumer-empowering technologies have provided consumers with a plethora of online venues
to exchange negative experiences with products and brands with a multitude of other
consumers. Complaints are now publicly shared on social network sites, this poses new
challenges for brands. Negative online interactions between consumers, also referred to as
, negative electronic word-of-mouth (NWOM) have effects on all phases of the consumer decision-
making process, including brand evaluation, brand choice, purchase behaviour and brand
loyalty. Companies have started to intervene in NWOM, this is referred to as web care.
Whereas proactive web care is able to initiate favourable brand evaluations dependent on the
platform in which web care is embedded (consumer-generated vs. brand-generated), reactive
web care on the other hand is proposed to be effective independent of the platform. Moreover,
brand evaluations are positively influenced when web care is perceived as a natural
communications style, where it conveys a conversational human voice.
NWOM has stronger effects than PWOM in terms of reach and impact. Due to the rise of web 2.0
complaining has changed from a private phenomenon into a public phenomenon. Brands need to
monitor the NWOM messages posted by unsatisfied consumers. This is important because
NWOM takes place not only in branded platforms, but also on consumer-generated platforms.
Webcare = the act of engaging in online interactions with (complaining) consumers, by actively
searching the web to address consumer feedback (e.g. questions, concerns and complaints).
Webcare is performed by one or more company representatives and serves as a tool in support
of customer relationship, reputation and brand management. Central to these efforts is the aim
to restore or improve the brand evaluations of complaining customers and/or of those who have
been exposed to the NWOM of complaining customers.
Proactive vs. reactive webcare
Proactive webcare = the company takes on a proactive approach and responds
unsolicitedly to NWOM.
o This kind of webcare can demonstrate a conversational human voice, but we
expect this only to occur in the context of brand-generated platforms.
Reactive webcare = the company responds to NWOM only when it is explicitly asked to
do so by the customer.
o This kind of webcare is likely to yield favourable brand evaluations, irrespective
of the platform.
o This kind of webcare is expected to score high on conversational human voice
when a consumer requests the brand to respond to NWOM.
Conversational human voice = an engaging and natural style of organizational communication as
perceived by an organization’s publics based on interactions between individuals in the
organization and individuals in publics.
For webcare to be perceived as engaging and natural, and thus as demonstrating human voice, it
should be based on ‘candid dialogue’. Communication with a human voice invites the audience to
communicate in a non-persuasive manner. Through this communication style brands mimic one-
to-one communication and humanize the corporate voice.
The results show that consumers evaluate a brand more favourably in a situation where the
focal brand responds to NWOM than in a situation in which the brand remains silent. So,
webcare positively influences the brand evaluations of consumers who have been exposed to
NWOM. This study demonstrates that consumers’ brand evaluations are positively influenced
when webcare demonstrates a conversational human voice.
In both consumer-generated and brand-generated platforms, a company was evaluated more
positively when it offered reactive webcare in response to NWOM.
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