Emerging Challenges in Social Media:
Social Complaints, Service Recovery, and Dysfunctional Consumers
Todd J. Bacile, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Loyola University New Orleans
New Orleans, LA, U.S.A.
Charles F. Hofacker, Ph.D.
Professor of Marketing
College of Business
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL, U.S.A.
Alexis Allen
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Marketing
College of Business
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL, U.S.A.
Introduction
Social media is unique from mass media marketing due to the simultaneous presence of a marketing communication channel and a publicly viewable customer service channel. Complicating matters is the fact that consumers are posting complaints on firms’ social media pages, which become viewable to a large audience within a firm-owned media channel. Online complaints are not new. Consumers post complaints via consumer-owned anti-brand Web sites, as well as neutrally-owned online review and consumer agency Web sites (Grégoire, Tripp, and Legoux 2009; Ward and Ostrom 2006). However, neither type of site is owned by an offending firm. It is this firm-ownership over the online environment which differentiates complaints posted within a brand’s social media space, hereafter referred to as social complaints.
A social complainer may believe a firm is responsible for monitoring the conduct of other consumers during the social complaint-recovery episode, whereas no such responsibility is expected in non-firm-owned media. Managing dysfunctional consumers (Harris and Reynolds 2003) is a firm’s responsibility. Fellow consumers’ social incivilities and rude language are attributed to a firm and produce a negative influence when such incivilities occur in a company’s service setting / environment (Andersson and Pearson 1999; Grove and Fisk 1997; Huang 2008).
The purpose of this research is to fill a noticeable void by examining the never before researched phenomenon of social complaints. A primary research question (RQ) guides this study: how widespread are social complaints, along with the corresponding unsupportive responses by dysfunctional consumers, and responses by firms? To answer the RQ the netnography method is utilized. The findings suggest that social complaints are a widely occurring, as close to 30% of the captured content are identified as social complaints. In addition, unsupportive comments from fellow consumers in response to complainants during the complaint-recovery process are present, yet go unmanaged by firms. The data implies that brand advocates defending a firm may be beneficial from the perspective of a brand (Einwiller et al. 2006). However, a fine line exists between advocacy and dysfunction, which brands must manage on firm-owned social media channels during customer service episodes.
Primary Research Study
Method
Complaints posted on social media sites along with dysfunctional behavior have never been formally examined in academic research. In this manner, the current study assesses the frequency of the phenomenon, which is an important first step prior to empirical investigation. Due to the lack of academic and practitioner research on the interactions of dysfunctional fellow consumers during social complaining episodes, netnography is the method of choice.
Netnography is ethnography on the Internet, which adapts ethnography to the study of emerging cultures and communities taking place via computer-mediated communications (Kozinets 2002). A particular strength of the netnographic method is its unobtrusiveness while still being able to discern needs, tastes, and decision-making influences (Kozinets 2002). This is in contrast to other qualitative methods, such as personal interviews, focus groups, and traditional ethnographies, which are prone to being intrusive to the natural setting (Patton 2002).
Design
The online settings and groups under examination were several brands’ Facebook pages. Facebook was the social medium of choice due to its widespread popularity. Some of the largest brands based on gross U.S. sales in three different industries were assessed: hotels, restaurants, and retailers. Two large brands from each industry were randomly chosen for a total of six companies under investigation. All six brands’ Facebook pages met Kozinets’ (1999) requirements for suitable online communities: all were relevant groups for the research question, a high number of messages were posted, there were a high number of message posters, information shared was detailed and rich, and between-member interactions were present.
Data Collection
For each firm a continuous 30-day block of Facebook wall posts created by consumers and responded to by fellow consumers or the brand were collected. A benefit of the netnographic method in the current context is that all the data was already in textual form and 100% accurate. Each brand’s 30-day block of Facebook wall posts was reviewed to code various elements. The data within this netnographic examination was solely based upon textual observations, which is an important and necessary aspect of netnography in comparison with ethnography (Kozinets 2002; Arnould and Wallendorf 1994). Repetitive themes and categories were recorded separately by the primary researcher and an industry professional with experience in social media marketing. The inter-coder reliability was 98%, with differences discussed and agreed upon.
Analysis and Results
The data across all six brands’ Facebook pages tell a compelling story as to the social complaining phenomenon. In short, social complaints are pervasive. Table 1 illustrates the primary elements relevant to the RQ. A baseline of the total number of consumer-authored message threads (including complaint and non-complaint threads) created on brands’ Facebook pages ranged from 87 to 569 for each of the six firms over the 30-day period (an average of approximately 3 to 19 consumer-created wall posts per day). Typical topics of the message threads are brand related comments, questions, and complaints. An example of a non-complaint post featuring comments from a consumer to a brand is depicted within Figure 1, in panel A.
With respect to complaints, the total number of consumer-authored message threads categorized as complaints ranged from 34 to 221 for each of the six firms (an average of approximately 1 to 7 consumer-created complaints posted per day). To further quantify the complaint wall posts, these complaint threads make up approximately 20% to 39% of all consumer-created message threads on each brand’s Facebook pages. An example of a complaint created by a consumer directed toward the brand is depicted within Figure 1, panel B.
The response rate by brands to complaint threads ranged from 57% to 91%. The typical response by a firm includes an apology and a request to gather more details via a customer support phone number or email address. Often similar verbiage is used repeatedly by a brand’s customer service employee. This repetitive verbiage did not go unnoticed by some of the consumers, as they questioned if the brand even cared because it was copying and pasting the same apologetic words and phrases. Panel C in Figure 1 has an example of a firm’s response.
The number of unsupportive (i.e. dysfunctional) comments posted by a fellow consumer in response to another consumer’s brand-directed complaint ranged from 2 to 30 unique threads across the six brands. Accounting for all of the dysfunctional comments, including multiple unsupportive comments appearing in the same complaint thread, produced a total of 2 to 72 dysfunctional comments across the six brands. An example of a dysfunctional comment by a consumer in response to another consumer’s complaint is depicted within Figure 1, panel D.
Discussion
Consumers are acting as co-producers of content within these firm-owned media environments. Over 2,000 different message threads were created by consumers across the six brands’ Facebook pages. Within the vast amount of user-generated content, a moderately large number - 20% to 39% of wall posts – are complaints. This suggests that the modern consumer views a firm-owned social media space as an extension of a service setting.
The theoretical contribution of this research is that a firm-owned social media space is a simultaneous marketing communication channel and an extension of a company’s service setting. These are two distinct, yet now related, marketing aspects co-existing in unison. It is the service provision aspect of social media that managers and researchers have thus far failed to identify in favor of focusing on the marketing communication aspect. However, recognizing a firm’s social media Webpage as a service environment is critical. Service-like interactions via social media are publicly viewable and open to a vast marketing audience. Companies are now forced to not only manage promotional messages and campaigns within social media channels, but also are required to actively monitor and manage the brand-consumer and consumer-consumer interactions. In effect, the same service management strategies required in traditional service settings, where fellow consumers are part of the servicescape and must be managed when dysfunction occurs (Bitner 1990; Reynolds and Harris 2009), are relevant to online firm-owned media.
The emergence of customer service on a marketing communication channel owned by a firm is the first service recovery platform easily viewable to a wide, public audience. Therefore, service products and offerings are not the only form of the provision of service available via computer-mediated channels (Meuter et al. 2000). Modern consumers view virtual firm-provided environments as exchange settings where posting complaints and service resolution are not only possible, but also expected. Thus, the era of publicly viewable online service recovery has begun.
References
Andersson, Lynne M. and Christine M. Pearson (1999), "Tit for Tat? The Spiraling Effect of Incivility in the Workplace," The Academy of Management Review, 24 (3), 452-471.
Arnould, Eric J. and Melanie Wallendorf (1994), "Market-Oriented Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation," Journal of Marketing Research, 31 (November), 484-504.
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Einwiller, Sabine A., Alexander Fedorikhin, Allison R. Johnson, and Michael A. Kamins (2006), "Enough is enough! When identification no longer prevents negative corporate associations," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34 (2), 185-194.
Grégoire, Yany, Thomas M. Tripp, and Renaud Legoux (2009), "When Customer Love Turns into Lasting Hate: The Effects of Relationship Strength and Time on Customer Revenge and Avoidance," Journal of Marketing, 73 (6), 18-32.
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----- (2002), "The Field behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities," Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 39, No. 1, 61-72.
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Table 1
Summary Data from the Netnography
Total # of consumer-created threads on the brand’s Facebook wall / 481 / 569 / 330 / 326 / 87 / 238 / 2,031
Total # of consumer-created complaint threads on the brand’s Facebook wall / 94 / 221 / 103 / 67 / 34 / 69 / 588
Overall % of threads which are complaints / 20% / 39% / 31% / 21% / 39% / 29% / 29%
# of responses by the brand to complaints
(Response rate %) / 62
(66%) / 192
(87%) / 59
(57%) / 61
(91%) / 31
(91%) / 49
(71%) / 454
(77%)
# of complaint threads with at least one dysfunctional comment from a fellow consumer / 30 / 8 / 4 / 2 / 2 / 14 / 60
Total # of dysfunctional comments by consumers / 72 / 8 / 6 / 4 / 2 / 14 / 106
# of complaint threads with at least one supportive comment from a fellow consumer / 49 / 65 / 15 / 10 / 6 / 16 / 161
Total # of supportive comments by consumers / 195 / 108 / 23 / 14 / 8 / 43 / 391
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Figure 1
Examples of Consumer-Authored Threads and Responses on Brands’ Facebook Pages
B: Complaint directed to the brand
C: Firm’s response to a social complaint
D: Dysfunctional comment by a fellow consumer in response to a complaint
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