Customer service 140 characters at a time: The users' perspective

Abstract Electronic word of mouth (eWoM) has been adopted by Internet users as a way of communicating their consumption preferences and experiences. Consumers are able to reach out to others, unknown to them, and have online conversations that can influence their behaviour. Organisations need to understand how to respond to these brand-related conversations conducted via social media. By looking through the lens of social capital, this paper contributes to social media and social capital research by studying the perceptions that 44 social media users have of companies that interact with them online. The users value social networks and support as part of their online relationships. However, several new value categories are identified when compared to previous research. Further research is required to investigate possible segmentation approaches and alternative methodological choices.

[1]  D. Fesenmaier,et al.  Towards understanding members’ general participation in and active contribution to an online travel community , 2004 .

[2]  Steve Baron,et al.  Relationship Marketing: A Consumer Experience Approach , 2010 .

[3]  Griffith Edwards,et al.  Computers and QDA – Can They Help It? A Report on a Qualitative Data Analysis Programme , 1990 .

[4]  Joel Podolny Networks as the Pipes and Prisms of the Market1 , 2001, American Journal of Sociology.

[5]  A. Tversky,et al.  Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk — Source link , 2007 .

[6]  Gerard Delanty The Foundations of Social Theory , 2009 .

[7]  D. Krackhardt,et al.  Bringing the Individual Back in: A Structural Analysis of the Internal Market for Reputation in Organizations , 1994 .

[8]  T. Revenson,et al.  Handbook of Health Psychology , 2001 .

[9]  P. Kawalek,et al.  Consumer Behaviour in Social Networking Sites: Implications for Marketers , 2011 .

[10]  Bernard Cova,et al.  Counter-brand and alter-brand communities: the impact of Web 2.0 on tribal marketing approaches , 2010 .

[11]  Rob Lee Social Capital and Business and Management: Setting a Research Agenda , 2009 .

[12]  Jochen Wirtz,et al.  Consumer complaining to firms: the determinants of channel choice , 2004 .

[13]  S. D. Berkowitz,et al.  Social Structures: A Network Approach , 1989 .

[14]  Aaron Smith,et al.  Social Media & Mobile Internet Use among Teens and Young Adults. Millennials. , 2010 .

[15]  K. Sheehan,et al.  Dimensions of Privacy Concern among Online Consumers , 2000 .

[16]  Tia Fisher,et al.  ROI in social media: A look at the arguments , 2009 .

[17]  Stephen P. Borgatti,et al.  Social Networks and Organizations , 2012 .

[18]  Verner D. Worm,et al.  Social capital and the dynamics of business negotiations between the northern Europeans and the Chinese , 2003 .

[19]  R. Oliver A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions , 1980 .

[20]  Jason Q. Zhang,et al.  When does electronic word-of-mouth matter? A study of consumer product reviews☆ , 2010 .

[21]  Bruno S. Silvestre,et al.  Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media , 2011 .

[22]  G. Svendsen,et al.  The Creation And Destruction of Social Capital: Entrepreneurship, Co-operative Movements And Institutions , 2004 .

[23]  Stanley Wasserman,et al.  Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications , 1994, Structural analysis in the social sciences.

[24]  Franz T. Lohrke,et al.  Entrepreneurial network development: Trusting in the process , 2008 .

[25]  Ko de Ruyter,et al.  Beyond the Call of Duty: Why Customers Contribute to Firm-hosted Commercial Online Communities , 2007 .

[26]  Peter D. Bennett,et al.  Consumer and industrial buying behavior , 1978 .

[27]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[28]  Colin Shaw The DNA of Customer Experience , 2007 .

[29]  Robert Johnston,et al.  Best-practice complaint management , 2002 .

[30]  M. Jakubiec,et al.  MARKETING LOGISTICS , 2013 .

[31]  Scott A. Snell,et al.  Human Resource Configurations, Intellectual Capital, and Organizational Performance. , 2004 .

[32]  M. McPherson,et al.  Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks , 2001 .

[33]  S. Li,et al.  The Influence of eWOM on Virtual Consumer Communities: Social Capital, Consumer Learning, and Behavioral Outcomes , 2007, Journal of Advertising Research.

[34]  Haider Ali,et al.  Exchanging value within individuals’ networks: Social support implications for health marketers , 2011 .

[35]  Fiona Stewart,et al.  Internet Communication and Qualitative Research , 2000 .

[36]  Peter H. Reingen,et al.  Social Ties and Word-of-Mouth Referral Behavior , 1987 .

[37]  Martin Kilduff,et al.  Special Issue: Frontiers of Organization Science, Part 1 of 2: Zooming In and Out: Connecting Individuals and Collectivities at the Frontiers of Organizational Network Research , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[38]  P. Cooke,et al.  Social capital, firm embeddedness and regional development , 2005 .

[39]  Robert D. Putnam,et al.  Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community , 2000, CSCW '00.

[40]  B. Uzzi,et al.  Embeddedness in the Making of Financial Capital: How Social Relations and Networks Benefit Firms Seeking Financing , 1999, The New Economic Sociology.

[41]  Patricia Galloway,et al.  Social capital and information technology , 2006, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[42]  N. Lin Social Capital: Frontmatter , 2001 .

[43]  K. Goffin,et al.  An exploratory study of ‘close’ supplier–manufacturer relationships , 2006 .

[44]  P. Hewer,et al.  Tribal mattering spaces: Social-networking sites, celebrity affiliations, and tribal innovations , 2010 .

[45]  A. Tversky,et al.  Prospect theory: analysis of decision under risk , 1979 .

[46]  J. Wiseman The development of generic concepts in qualitative research through cumulative application , 1987 .

[47]  Bernd Stauss,et al.  The dimensions of complaint satisfaction: process and outcome complaint satisfaction versus cold fact and warm act complaint satisfaction , 2002 .

[48]  W. Kim,et al.  Effects of an online virtual community on customer loyalty and travel product purchases. , 2004 .

[49]  Shelley E. Taylor Social Support: A Review , 2011 .

[50]  Sydney Shoemaker,et al.  Spreading the Word. , 1987 .

[51]  Il Im,et al.  An analysis of online customer complaints: implications for Web complaint management , 2002, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[52]  Alain Degenne Social capital: a theory of social structure and action , 2004 .

[53]  M. Haenlein A social network analysis of customer-level revenue distribution , 2011 .

[54]  J. Rossiter,et al.  Comparing perceptions of marketing communication channels , 2011 .

[55]  Tomás Bayón,et al.  The effect of word of mouth on services switching , 2004 .

[56]  S. Tagg,et al.  Editorial , 2010 .

[57]  Lena E. Bygballe,et al.  Managing international supply: The balance between total costs and customer service , 2012 .

[58]  Andreas M. Kaplan,et al.  A Model to Determine Customer Lifetime Value in a Retail Banking Context , 2007 .

[59]  Jinhong Xie,et al.  Online Social Interactions: A Natural Experiment on Word of Mouth versus Observational Learning , 2010 .

[60]  Philip E. T. Lewis,et al.  Research Methods for Business Students , 2006 .

[61]  L. Huang Social contagion effects in experiential information exchange on bulletin board systems , 2010 .

[62]  Bajenaru Alexandru THE ART AND SCIENCE OF WORD-OF-MOUTH AND ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH , 2010 .

[63]  Susan Spiggle Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative Data in Consumer Research , 1994 .

[64]  Hans Jørn Juhl,et al.  The DNA of customer experience: How emotions drive value , 2009 .

[65]  Bernard J. Jansen,et al.  Twitter power: Tweets as electronic word of mouth , 2009, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[66]  H L Michael,et al.  MANAGEMENT OF RESEARCH. INTRODUCTION , 1973 .

[67]  Doug Schuler,et al.  New community networks - wired for change , 1996 .

[68]  A. Zaheer,et al.  Bridging ties: a source of firm heterogeneity in competitive capabilities , 1999 .

[69]  D. Cowles,et al.  Interpersonal Communication and Personal Influence on the Internet: A Framework for Examining Online Word-of-Mouth , 2002 .

[70]  Chang-Hyun Jin Social Capital Index , 2015 .

[71]  Marius Bulearca,et al.  Twitter: a Viable Marketing Tool for SMEs? , 2010 .

[72]  Mark S. Granovetter The Strength of Weak Ties , 1973, American Journal of Sociology.

[73]  Steven Durlauf,et al.  Social Capital , 2004 .

[74]  Michael Tow Cheung,et al.  Measuring consumer satisfaction in internet banking: a core framework , 2008, CACM.

[75]  R. Petty Marketing without Consent: Consumer Choice and Costs, Privacy, and Public Policy , 2000 .

[76]  Bat Batjargal,et al.  Social Capital and Entrepreneurial Performance in Russia: A Longitudinal Study , 2003 .

[77]  G. Soutar,et al.  Word of mouth: measuring the power of individual messages , 2012 .

[78]  Clifford Stoll,et al.  Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway , 1995 .

[79]  Aparna Joshi The Influence of Organizational Demography on the External Networking Behavior of Teams , 2006 .

[80]  Herbert Snyder,et al.  Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data , 1996 .

[81]  G Walsh,et al.  Electronic Word-of-Mouth: Consequences of and Motives for Reading Customer Articulations on the Internet , 2004 .

[82]  John P. Robinson,et al.  Social Implications of the Internet , 2001 .

[83]  Fiona Stewart,et al.  Internet Communication and Qualitative Research: A Handbook for Researching Online , 2000 .

[84]  S. D. Berkowitz,et al.  Social Structures: A Network Approach , 1989 .

[85]  A. Parasuraman,et al.  Service quality delivery through web sites: A critical review of extant knowledge , 2002, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

[86]  Nan Zhou,et al.  Making your online voice loud: the critical role of WOM information , 2011 .

[87]  Howard E. Aldrich,et al.  Entrepreneurship Through Social Networks , 1986 .

[88]  Prashanth U. Nyer,et al.  The role of emotions in marketing , 1999 .

[89]  Chrysanthos Dellarocas,et al.  The Digitization of Word-of-Mouth: Promise and Challenges of Online Feedback Mechanisms , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[90]  Kate Williams,et al.  Social Networks and Social Capital: Rethinking Theory in Community Informatics , 2008, J. Community Informatics.

[91]  Jagdip Singh,et al.  What Occurs Once Consumers Complain? A Theoretical Model for Understanding Satisfaction/ Dissatisfaction Outcomes of Complaint Responses , 1991 .

[92]  F. Fukuyama The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order , 1999 .

[93]  R. Burt The contingent value of social capital. , 1997 .

[94]  J. Phelps,et al.  Privacy Concerns and Consumer Willingness to Provide Personal Information , 2000 .

[95]  P. Adler,et al.  Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept , 2002 .

[96]  R. Bagozzi,et al.  A Social Influence Model of Consumer Participation in Network- and Small-Group-Based Virtual Communities , 2004 .

[97]  Peter A. Dacin,et al.  Spreading the word: Investigating antecedents of consumers’ positive word-of-mouth intentions and behaviors in a retailing context , 2005 .

[98]  Keith N. Hampton,et al.  Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb , 2003 .

[99]  Tien Ee Dominic Yeo,et al.  Social-Media Early Adopters Don't Count , 2012, Journal of Advertising Research.

[100]  R. Johnston Linking complaint management to profit , 2001 .

[101]  K. Weick FROM SENSEMAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS , 2021, The New Economic Sociology.

[102]  Andrew C. Inkpen,et al.  Social Capital, Networks, and Knowledge Transfer , 2005 .

[103]  E. Hirschman,et al.  The Experiential Aspects of Consumption: Consumer Fantasies, Feelings, and Fun , 1982 .

[104]  Edward L. Glaeser,et al.  The Formation of Social Capital , 1973 .

[105]  Holger Roschk,et al.  A Meta-Analysis of Organizational Complaint Handling and Customer Responses , 2011 .

[106]  Roger B. Mason Word of mouth as a promotional tool for turbulent markets , 2008 .

[107]  S. A. King,et al.  Internet therapy and self-help groups—the pros and cons. , 1998 .