IJRM Best Paper Award for members of research group
4 June 2019
The research group received another prestigious award. Nele Hansen, Ann-Kristin Knapp and Thorsten Hennig-Thurau won the "IJRM Best Paper Award" at the end of this year's EMAC in Hamburg. Their article "Brand crises in the digital age: The short- and long-term effects of social media firestorms on consumers and brands" prevailed over all other publications in the International Journal of Research in Marketing published in 2018.
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. 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.
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.
After the JAMS Best Paper Award, this is now the next prestigious award for the work of the research group. Congratulations to the authors!
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, 35(4), 557-574.