Using Social Media Listening in Crisis Communication and Management: New Methods and Practices for Looking into Crises

The paper aims to explore new methods and practices for looking into crises in online environments by using social media listening tools and methods. Based on the case of two privately owned hospitals in Romania facing boycotts due to their response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we study the social media conversations on the topic, the emerging themes, the visibility triggered and the impact on the brand and actors involved. Drawing on a social media listening and crisis communication framework, our research looks to unveil the relationship between stakeholders’ expectations and brand promise, aiming to foresee predictive crisis communication and management models.

Ethics and the Prospect of E-Commerce Platforms in Doing Business in Nigeria

Following the outbreak of the pandemic, more Nigerians became liberal towards accepting and engaging e-commerce platforms for their purchases. However, there is a surging scepticism about the ability of e-commerce platforms in Nigeria to meet the demands of consumers. Nigerians have accused e-commerce platforms of uncompetitive turnaround time, discrepancy between customer orders and deliveries and failure to and deliver on brand promise. This chapter explores the ethical remedy to the unethical concerns expressed by Nigerian consumers when engaging ecommerce platforms. The study purposively gathered selected data on customers’ feedback from Jumia Nigeria’s website between April 1st and July 31st 2020 when lockdown measures were enforced in Nigeria. The study found that consumers’ mistrust and complaints about e-commerce platforms can be attributed to the absence of transparency on the part of e-commerce platforms to effectively use communication in keeping their customers abreast of the status of their order. Based on the findings, it was recommended that effective communication channels should be deployed to keep customers abreast of circumstances resulting in the delay or cancelling of their orders.

Employees Perspective on Internal Branding Mechanisms. Case Study of a Multinational Organization in Ghana

This study examines how employees are supported to acquire requisite knowledge and skills and build brand supportive behaviors for corporate success. The study was conducted in a manufacturing setup of a multinational organization in Ghana. Being an exploratory study, a qualitative approach was adopted, and primary data was collected from twenty respondents via face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Purposive sampling was employed as it enabled diversity to be explored and targeted personnel to be contacted and interviewed. Manual coding was used in analyzing data collected. The study findings identified various mechanisms that an organization can employ to help employees build brand supportive behaviors, and to get employees empowered to deliver on the brand promise. The findings revealed that internal branding initiatives such as employees perceived knowledge and capability building activities, internal communication, leadership support, and the work environment, acted as critical mechanisms that contributed to employees’ empowerment and display of brand supportive behaviors. The study further notes that effective management and implementation of internal branding activities contributes greatly to employees’ empowerment, employees’ internalization of corporate values, and consequently employees’ delivery on the brand promise. The study results confirm the significance of internal branding initiatives to employees’ development and organizational growth and recommends that internal branding initiatives be promoted for sustained success. The research approach adopted however limits generalizability of the findings to other organizations. This study contributes to the scanty empirical literature on internal branding in Africa, and more importantly to the limited literature on internal branding in Ghana.

A Psycholinguistic Study of Political Rhetoric of Fear

Political campaigns are dynamic struggles between candidates to define the informational context for voters. Early studies (Kaid, 1981, 1994a, 1994b) suggested that political advertising has cognitive and behavioral effects on voters. It communicates the brand promise of a candidate blending functional and emotional benefits that voters gain from their relationships with a candidate. This study, based on Lakoff’s Framing Model (LFM, 2004), proposes a pragmatic model for the analysis of a political election rhetoric. Within this pragmatic model, it is shown that in such a rhetoric the process of choosing variables of mental and psychological strategies is used. Such a process can be understood as the outcome of producers’ choice making, dynamic negotiation and linguistic adaptation. The analysis of a political discourse makes it possible to see how frames are powerful rhetorical entities that motivate audience to filter their perceptions of the world. It presents evidences to the claim that a candidate’s speech using ‘rhetoric of fear’ appeals to the audience. Contradicted reactions appear: some audience react feeling ‘fearful’ while others respond feeling ‘protected’ or ‘heard’ that a candidate is listening to their concerns and willing to fulfil them. It also shows how the institutionalized use of strategy language has implications: some of these emerge from the genre itself while others derive from situation; specific choices.

Internal branding at university: Do tenure and job security matter?

Universities, as educational service providers, must pay attention to their employees who are pivotal in delivering and communicating brand promise and service quality to the stakeholders. While branding initiatives most frequently focus on external stakeholders, internal branding efforts establish systems/processes and consequent employees’ behaviour that are consistent with external branding efforts. With a sample of 753 faculty members and researchers from a Spanish public University, the study aims to establish if employee tenure and job security have a significant relationship with employees’ brand commitment and employees’ brand supporting behaviour. An analysis of variance was carried out for testing the hypothesis. Differences were found according to tenure in employees’ brand commitment while job security did not impact significantly on employees’ brand commitment. In addition, a positive and significant relationship were found between employees’ brand supporting behaviour and tenure, but not for job security. For business practitioners, this research state that it is essential for service companies, such as universities, to use differing approaches to employees according to their organisational tenure as an important managerial implication.

Exploring How Employee Sense of Brand Community Affects Their Attitudes and Behavior

The success of hospitality brands relies heavily on employees, collectively, to transform the tacit brand promise and unique brand values into a coherent brand experience for their guests. Thus, employees are likely to develop a sense of community that coalesces around brand values. A sense of community contributes to members’ belongingness, social exchanges, and subjective well-being. However, the importance of an employee-based brand community has rarely been considered. This study proposes and examines the role of a volitional employee-based brand community in promoting employees’ brand-aligned performance. With 223 responses from U.S.-based hospitality employees, this study supports the positive role of employee sense of brand community, which emanates from the organization’s brand climate. In turn, such a community enhances employee belief in the brand as well as their subsequent brand-aligned performance.

Brand-Centered Human Resource Practices and Brand Citizenship Behavior: The Notion to Develop Competitive Advantage

The Brand citizenship behavior (BCB) is relatively a new aspect in marketing literature. Researchers have given a label of BCB to the discretionary behavior that employees’ exhibit for the successful delivery of brand promise. In internal branding, the role of an employee is recognized as critical in delivering the service as promised by the brand. As practitioners and academicians argue that, an employee’s brand-aligned behavior that goes above and beyond the job responsibility can be an asset for the company and is difficult for competitors to imitate. Drawing on employees’ brand- aligned behavior to build the strong organization brand this study conceptualized that, the successful implementation of internal branding doctrine could be strengthened by brand-centered human resource practices and develop a new route for companies to build the competitive advantage. Thus, the study found that the human resource practices such as fair recruitment process, training programs, and socialization practice could enhance the employees’ brand citizenship behavior.