New Publication in International Journal of Research in Marketing
8 October 2018
Another high-ranking publication has emerged from the research group. The paper "Brand crises in the digital age" by Nele Hansen, Ann-Kristin Kupfer and Thorsten Hennig-Thurau was accepted for publication in the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
In this paper, the authors examine the consequences of the phenomenon “social media firestorms”, which imply the sudden occurrence of many, predominantly negative social media expressions against a brand. In particular, the authors analyze how these firestorms have short- and long-term effects on brand perceptions and on consumers’ long-term memory. In their unique data set, the authors combine secondary data about 78 real-life firestorms with ith daily brand perceptions obtained from the YouGov panel and survey data from 997 consumers.
Their results indicate that brands indeed can suffer from social media firestorms. Of all affected brands, 58% suffer from a decrease in short-term brand perceptions, and 40% suffer long-term negative effects. In addition, the authors show relevant contingency factors that can strengthen or mitigate the negative consequences. For instance, results reveal that a firestorm can be more severe when it is initiated by a vivid trigger (e.g., video in the first firestorm tweet), linked to a product/service or social failure, characterized by a large volume of social media messages, or when they last longer.
This publication was part of the work in the project B.1 during the first funding period, in which different members of the research groups analyzed the impact of negative consumer statements on brands in social media from various perspectives.
Hansen, N., Kupfer, A.-K., & Hennig-Thurau, T. (2018): Brand crises in the digital age: The short- and long-term effects of social media firestorms on consumers and brands, International Journal of Research in Marketing, forthcoming.