Inaugural lecture by Oliver Schnittka on 9 October
“Brand reactions to customer complaints on social media platforms”
Brands daily face an enormous amount of customer complaint postings in their Social Media Brand Communities (SMBCs), i.e., consumers share dissatisfying experiences and negative brand evaluations addressed to other users and the brand itself. Moreover, existing literature regarding offline customer complaints has widely shown that inappropriate brand reactions to such customer complaints can have significant, negative consequences for brand evaluations and sales. However, in contrast to offline customer complaints, where the communication typically only takes place between the consumer and the brand, customer complaints in SMBCs appear publicly visible to a large number of users.
Thus, the appropriate reactions of brands to customer complaints in SMBCs gain tremendous managerial and societal relevance since a company’s response to these customer complaints has a huge audience in contrast to offline customer complaints and hence becomes part of the brand story.
The lecture will first derive the general role of social media in firms’strategic brand management and afterwards present the results of a current research project including field and laboratory data, which investigates how the effectiveness of a response strategy to customer complaints is dependent on brand community type, i.e., whether consumers use the brand environment for social or functional goals.
The Inaugural lecture will be held on 9 October at 14.00 hrs in the Auditorium, University of Southern Denmark, Niels Bohrs Vej 9, Esbjerg.
After the inaugural lecture a reception will be held.
Everybody is welcome!
However, please contact Ulla Oehlenschläger uho@sdu.dk by 1 October for registration.
