Conflict Culture and Conflict Management in Consumption Communities

Abstract

This study explores conflict culture as a distinct and influential element of a consumption community's broader culture, and explores how communities initiate, perform, manage, and resolve intra-community conflicts. A four-year interpretive study of the Premium Cola consumption community reveals two sets of formal and informal elements of conflict culture; explains how community members perform routine, and manage transgressive conflicts;shows how members garner positive and negative practical, identity, and relationship value from these two types of conflict; and documents how a community's conflict culture develops through inventing new conflict behaviors to resolve transgressive conflicts. The study thus contributes new theoretical insights to the literature on social conflict in online consumption communities, discusses managerial implications, and initiates a discussion about conflict culture.

“Plan your Burn, Burn your Plan”: How Decentralization, Storytelling, and Communification Can Support Participatory Practices

“…To avoid foreclosing discussion, collectivist organizations formalized channels for expressing dissenting opinions, especially in discussions with leaders (Osterman ). Rather than regarding conflict as divisive and something to avoid, members can deploy conflict generatively to explore possibilities (Husemann, Ladstaetter, and Luedicke ). When making decisions, one collective doesn't aim for uniform agreement; instead, its members foster decentralization (Leach ).…”

Corporate conflict management on social media brand fan pages

“…Studies have so far focused mainly on conflicts between consumers and brands/businesses (C2B), including studies on consumers punishing brands for unethical conduct (Grappi, Romani & Bagozzi, 2013;Haberstroh, Orth, Hoffmann & Brunk, 2015), as well as consumer complaints about unsatisfactory service/product experiences (Van Noort & Willemsen, 2012). A more recent area of research interest in the social-media literature is the investigation of conflict between consumers, a phenomenon generally referred to as consumer-to-consumer (C2C) conflict (Gebauer, Füller & Pezzei, 2013;Hickman & Ward, 2007;Husemann, Ladstaetter & Luedicke, 2015). This type of online conflict describes a scenario in which one consumer verbally attacks another consumer in relation to a brand.…”

“…Despite these findings, the marketing literature on the corporate management of C2C conflicts in online environments remains limited. The central focus of existing studies is not on corporate conflict management strategies and these were drawn upon in a conceptual manner or treated as an analytical sub-theme (Husemann et al, 2015;Sibai, de Valck, Farrell & Rudd, 2015). Indeed, Matzat and Rooks (2014) recently noted that empirically informed research is lacking.…”

Tensions between Value Capture and Value Slippage: The Case of Brand Communities

“…In addition, in some cases, a part of the value slips to another actor (Cova & Paranque, 2016). Going to extremes, consumers can even create a new competitor (Husemann, Ladstaetter, & Luedicke, 2015). This is not often the case, but with the empowerment of consumers, value slippage is a growing concern for the brand-owning companies.…”