Transmission of negative brand-relevant content on social media

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashleigh Powell ◽  
Constantino Stavros ◽  
Angela Dobele

Purpose Understanding how to predict and manage the spread of negative brand-relevant content is of critical concern to marketers. This paper aims to contribute to this understanding by building on existing anti-branding, brand hate and word-of-mouth literature to explore the factors that lead individuals to engage in the transmission of negative brand-relevant information via social media. Design/methodology/approach A two-phase exploratory design was used. The first stage involved an analysis of negative transmission via comments left on news and brand posts. The second phase of the research involved a series of 13 depth interviews with frequent social media users about their negative brand-relevant transmission behavior to add richness and depth to the findings from the passive observation in the first phase of the research. Findings The first phase of the research demonstrated that negative transmission can be both brand-related (e.g. driven by-product or service failure or corporate irresponsibility) and consumer-related (e.g. driven by self or social motives). The second phase of the research clarified that negative transmission often occurs in the absence of brand hate, particularly when it can be used as a covert method of self-enhancement for the transmitter via downward social comparisons. Originality/value Negative transmission as a form of anti-branding that is more strongly self-related (as opposed to brand) is established, progressing understanding and applications of contemporary media channels. Implications, including how brand-generated controversy and consumer reinforcement can be used to manage negative transmission, are offered.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sevil Yesiloglu ◽  
Juliet Memery ◽  
Chris Chapleo

PurposeThis study aims to investigate consumer motivations behind brand-related engagement on social media by exploring three different engagement types: consuming, contributing (to) and creating. Previous research suggests that many brands seek to engage with consumers via communications on social networking sites; however, most focus on quantitative metrics and measurement tools to evaluate such behaviour and so offer limited understanding and guidance. To address this gap, the current study utilises a mixed-method approach to investigate the motivations behind each brand-related engagement type to provide deeper insight into what motivates consumers to engage with brand-related posts on social networking sites. This study also aims to investigate whether the motivations between different engagement types exist and whether these vary between brands and other people's brand-related posts.Design/methodology/approachA two-phase integrated qualitative–quantitative research design was utilised. Twelve semi-structured interviews explored the range of consumers' brand engagement motivations before an online survey (N = 225) identified and confirmed the motivational similarities and differences between the three brand-related engagement types.FindingsDifferent motives influence each brand-related engagement type, bar the “enjoyment” motive, which triggers all three engagement types. Of particular interest is the identification of a new motive for engagement-seeking compensation that influences negative brand-related engagement.Practical implicationsThrough understanding what motivates consumers to consume, contribute and create, brands can tailor their marketing messages to each different brand-related engagement type. This will increase their engagement with consumers on social networking sites, as specific segments can be created by the brand to enhance their targeting strategies based on consumers' differing motivations within social media channels.Originality/valueThis study contributes a much-needed framework of motivations for brand-related engagement on social media, recognising variations in motivations by type of engagement (consume, contribute (to), create).


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy R. Fitzpatrick ◽  
Paula L. Weissman

PurposeThe aim of this study was to understand how public relations leaders view and use social media analytics (SMA) and the impact of SMA on the public relations function.Design/methodology/approachThe research involved in-depth interviews with chief communication officers (CCOs) from leading multinational corporate brands.FindingsThe findings revealed that although CCOs perceive social media analytics as strategically important to the advancement of public relations, the use of social media data is slowed by challenges associated with building SMA capacity.Theoretical and practical implications – The research extends public relations theory on public relations as a strategic management function and provides practical insights for building SMA capabilities.Originality/valueThe study is among the first to provide empirical evidence of how companies are using social media analytics to enhance public relations efforts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (9) ◽  
pp. 2195-2216
Author(s):  
Alan Tadeu de Moraes ◽  
Luciano Ferreira da Silva ◽  
Paulo Sergio Gonçalves de Oliveira

Purpose This study aims to systematize the acquisition phase of absorptive capacity microprocesses that contribute to project management (PM) knowledge identification. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory and descriptive qualitative research was adopted. The first stage consisted of building the conceptual framework based on four systematic-literature-reviews. The data collection process in the second phase involved in-depth interviews, which are adequate to understand the interviewee’s reality. The sample composition consisted of 15 respondents who are PM professionals with an average of 15 years of experience. Each interviewee was chosen based on their expertise and ability to transmit the entire management process of several projects. The data were analyzed using the Atlas. Tecnology information software following the grounded theory technique with three coding cycles: open, axial and selective. Findings Based on the results, the authors organized the microprocesses into three groups: events, social interaction and the use of tools and techniques. Research limitations/implications The primary limitation of the study was the number of respondents. Future studies will be able to identify other microprocesses and evaluate their role in the knowledge identification process. Practical implications This study presents a systematization of microprocesses in knowledge identification, as it occurs in the context of PM. Based on the results of this study, organizations will be able to choose the microprocesses that best fit their operations and activities according to the complexity, innovation and/or criticality of their projects. Originality/value The systematic literature review revealed a gap in the knowledge identification phase of knowledge management as it pertains to PM. Thus, this study presents a systematization of how knowledge identification occurs in the context of PM.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 873-896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongyi Shou ◽  
Xinyu Zhao ◽  
Lujie Chen

Purpose Cloud computing is a major enabling technology for Industry 4.0 and the Big Data era. However, cloud-based firms, who establish their businesses on cloud platforms, have received scant attention in the extant operations management (OM) literature. To narrow this gap, the purpose of this paper is to investigate cloud-based firms from an operations strategy perspective. Design/methodology/approach A two-phase multi-method approach was adopted. In the first phase, content analysis of 27 reports from cloud-based firms was conducted, aided by text mining keyword extraction. Two data-related operations capabilities were identified and hypotheses were posited regarding the relationships between data resources (DR), operations capabilities and firm growth (FG). In the second phase, a sample of 190 cloud-based firms was collected. Seemingly unrelated regression and bootstrapping method were employed to test the proposed hypotheses using the survey data. Findings The content analysis indicates data as a key resource and both data processing capability and data transformational capability as critical operations capabilities of cloud-based firms. FG is regarded as a top priority in the cloud context. The regression results indicate that DR and the two capabilities contribute to the growth of cloud-based firms. Moreover, a follow-up bootstrapping analysis reveals that the mediating effects of the two capabilities vary between different types of FG. Originality/value To the authors’ best knowledge, this is one of the first OM studies on cloud-based firms. This study extends the operations strategy literature by identifying and testing the key operations capabilities and priorities of cloud-based firms. It also provides insightful implications for industrial practitioners.


2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 1027-1055
Author(s):  
Thanh-Tho Quan ◽  
Duc-Trung Mai ◽  
Thanh-Duy Tran

PurposeThis paper proposes an approach to identify categorical influencers (i.e. influencers is the person who is active in the targeted categories) in social media channels. Categorical influencers are important for media marketing but to automatically detect them remains a challenge.Design/methodology/approachWe deployed the emerging deep learning approaches. Precisely, we used word embedding to encode semantic information of words occurring in the common microtext of social media and used variational autoencoder (VAE) to approximate the topic modeling process, through which the active categories of influencers are automatically detected. We developed a system known as Categorical Influencer Detection (CID) to realize those ideas.FindingsThe approach of using VAE to simulate the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) process can effectively handle the task of topic modeling on the vast dataset of microtext on social media channels.Research limitations/implicationsThis work has two major contributions. The first one is the detection of topics on microtexts using deep learning approach. The second is the identification of categorical influencers in social media.Practical implicationsThis work can help brands to do digital marketing on social media effectively by approaching appropriate influencers. A real case study is given to illustrate it.Originality/valueIn this paper, we discuss an approach to automatically identify the active categories of influencers by performing topic detection from the microtext related to the influencers in social media channels. To do so, we use deep learning to approximate the topic modeling process of the conventional approaches (such as LDA).


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiwangi Singh ◽  
Akshay Chauhan ◽  
Sanjay Dhir

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use Twitter analytics for analyzing the startup ecosystem of India. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses descriptive analysis and content analytics techniques of social media analytics to examine 53,115 tweets from 15 Indian startups across different industries. The study also employs techniques such as Naïve Bayes Algorithm for sentiment analysis and Latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm for topic modeling of Twitter feeds to generate insights for the startup ecosystem in India. Findings The Indian startup ecosystem is inclined toward digital technologies, concerned with people, planet and profit, with resource availability and information as the key to success. The study categorizes the emotions of tweets as positive, neutral and negative. It was found that the Indian startup ecosystem has more positive sentiments than negative sentiments. Topic modeling enables the categorization of the identified keywords into clusters. Also, the study concludes on the note that the future of the Indian startup ecosystem is Digital India. Research limitations/implications The analysis provides a methodology that future researchers can use to extract relevant information from Twitter to investigate any issue. Originality/value Any attempt to analyze the startup ecosystem of India through social media analysis is limited. This research aims to bridge such a gap and tries to analyze the startup ecosystem of India from the lens of social media platforms like Twitter.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-163
Author(s):  
Abhishek Mishra

Purpose Despite the volume of work on the subject, product design and its conceptualization has remained relatively abstract. There is hardly any discussion about the holistic meaning of design, especially with regards to its meaning for a user. This paper aims to explore consumer design perception to provide it a multidimensional definition and measure that is more relevant to industrial designers. Design/methodology/approach The study was done in two qualitative phases: the first to generate and confirm the design dimensions pre-conceived from literature, corroborated with consumer voices; and the second to include gamified depth interviews triangulated with conventional depth interviews and word association-based correspondence analysis to generate items that can measure each of those dimensions. Findings The first study confirms five dimensions of consumer design perception: visual, functional, kinesthetic, interface and information. Following the second phase, the study proposes five items for visual design, seven for functional design, three for kinesthetic design, four for interface design and five for information design. Research limitations/implications Though through multiple qualitative studies, combined with literary evidence, this work provides reasonable qualitative validity to the findings, a semiotic analysis-based methodologies that can further concretize, if not refute, the findings. Rooted in the theory of design value, the study explores transformation of design values, from the designer’s domain to that of a consumer. While each of the design constructs has gone through a thorough investigation in literature, this work is the first to provide a unified theory of consumer design perception. Practical implications Designers have long struggled to know what consumers want. There is a clear divide in designers and consumers’ meanings of design. This study attempts to bridge this divide. Items measuring each construct should enable them in tweaking their offerings to a consumer’s liking. Originality/value Design is an abstract term and can be applied by a designer or a consumer. Dimensionalization of this complex term for better understanding using innovative qualitative tools serves as an original contribution to field of design research.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaël Opgenhaffen ◽  
An-Sofie Claeys

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine employers’ policy with regard to employees’ social media use. Specifically, the authors examine the extent to which employers allow the use of social media in the workplace, what opportunities can be related to employees’ social media use and how social media guidelines are implemented within organizations. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews were conducted with HR and communication managers of 16 European companies from different sectors and of varying size. Findings Some organizations believe that social media should be accessible to employees while others ban them from the workplace. Most respondents believe that organizations can benefit from employees sharing work-related content with their own network. However, they encourage the sharing and retweeting of official corporate messages rather than employees developing their own messages. This fear regarding employees’ messages on social media is reflected in the broad adoption of social media guidelines. Research limitations/implications Future research should chart the nature of existing social media guidelines (restrictive vs incentive). Accordingly, the perceived sense and nonsense of social media guidelines in companies should be investigated, not only among the managers but also among employees. Practical implications Organizations should remain in dialogue with employees with regard to social media. Managers seem overly concerned with potential risks and forget the opportunities that can arise when employees operate as ambassadors. Originality/value The use of in-depth interviews allowed the authors to assess the rationale behind social media guidelines within organizations in depth and formulate suggestions to organizations and communication managers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theophilus Olugbenga Babatunde ◽  
Cyril Ayodele Ajayi

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of information and communication technology (ICT) on real estate agency transactions with a view to determine its influence on the performance of estate agents. Design/methodology/approach A research approach in which questionnaire was administered to elicit relevant information from 220 practicing Estate Surveyors and Valuers surveyed in the course of the study. Data collected were analysed using mean ranking, relative influence index and analysis of variance. Findings The results showed that the use of ICT impacted positively on real estate agency transactions by promoting company’s brand thereby increasing the level of patronage. Consequently, the increased level of patronage signifies an increase in the level of income of the agents. Research limitations/implications The study was limited to social media applications otherwise referred to as ICT, which are used in real estate agency transactions. Further study on other ICT media and their effects on more areas of real estate practice in the developing economy may be required. Originality/value This paper is one of the few works on the impact of ICT on real estate agency transactions with particular reference to the social media networking especially in an emerging economy. Most of the previous studies conducted on ICT and real estate focussed only on internet use with respect to real estate agents and practices.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Freeman ◽  
Tao Chen

Purpose – This paper aims to focus on development of a green supplier selection model using an index system based on a combination of traditional supplier and environmental supplier selection criteria. Strategies that balance economic and environmental performance are increasingly sought after as enterprises that increasingly focus on the sustainability of their operations. Green supply chain management (GSCM) in particular, enables the integration of environmentally friendly suppliers into the supply chain to be systematised to fit with specific environmental regulations and policies. More persuasively, GSCM allows enterprises to improve profits whilst lowering impacts on the global environment. Design/methodology/approach – A two-phase survey approach was adopted for the research. For the first phase, semi-structured interviews with senior management representatives of the case company – a Chinese-based electronic machinery manufacturer – were used to determine green supplier selection criteria. For the second phase, a two-part questionnaire survey was undertaken, the first part providing the data for an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis of the first-phase criteria and the second with collecting data for an Entropy weight analysis. The resultant AHP and Entropy weights were then combined to form compromised weights – which, using technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) methodology, were translated into preferential rankings of suppliers. Findings – Senior managers were found to rank traditional criteria more highly than environmental alternatives – the implication being that for the company, concerned, it may take some time before environmental awareness is fully assimilated into GSCM practice. Originality/value – The paper moves us a significant step closer to the application more widely, of innovative AHP-Entropy/TOPSIS methodology to real-world SCM problems.


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