Corporate crisis management on social media: A morality violations perspective

Abstract

Communication via a social network function enabled by social media has greatly empowered consumers' secondary crisis communication, as compared to a firm's crisis communication, and has thus changed corporate crisis management. This study aims to uncover consumers' decision process of engaging in secondary crisis communication in a social media context. Drawing on the social control perspective and impression management theory, this study examines the role of perceived morality violations and consumers' susceptibility to social influence in shaping consumers' secondary crisis communication in corporate crises. Moreover, leveraging cognitive dissonance theory, this study further examines the effects of corporate responses on the process of consumers' secondary crisis communication. A survey design with four scenarios was conducted to test a series of hypotheses relating to the decision process of secondary crisis communication. Our empirical results demonstrate that consumers' approach to secondary crisis communication on social media depends largely to the degree to which they perceive moral violations in the firms' crisis response. The findings also show that consumers tend to want to believe they are doing the “right thing” when considering secondary crisis communication and thus are afraid of being disliked by others for their purchasing decisions related to a firm in crisis. Such social conformance can result in a snowballing of negative word of mouth in product-harm crises cases. Findings contribute to the literature on social media crisis management and consumers' communication behavior on social media during product-harm crises.

Social media and mental health in students: a cross-sectional study during the covid-19 pandemic

“…However, this popularity has resulted in signi cant lifestyle changes, as well as intentional or unintentional changes in various aspects of human social life(18). Despite many advantages, the high use of social media brings negative physical, psychological, and social problems and consequences (19), but despite the use and access of more people to the Internet, its consequences and crises have been ignored (20).…”

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“…The source credibility mediates the effect of source reputation and behavioral intentions. While Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are considered the most trustworthy and reliable source in crisis management (Kim and Park, 2017), the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC) assumes the importance of third parties as a secondary crisis communication (Zheng et al , 2020), as is the case of personal recommendations in social media used as a strategy to address a corporate crisis situation (Austin et al , 2012; Etter and Vestergaard, 2015).…”

“…This is why consumers focus on positive brand items and disregard harmful information about them in order to minimize this dissonance (Coombs and Holladay, 2006). However, factors such as the fear of being disliked by others for purchasing products of a brand undergoing a crisis event and social conformance highlight the importance of secondary crisis communication developed by social media influencers in the digital arena (Zheng et al , 2020).…”

“…This happens because of the expectation confirmation theory, which states that a brand's perceived guilt is minimized when the brand has built a previous positive image in the society (Edwards and Smith, 1996). Moreover, consumer perception of corporate moral violations also implicates the outcomes of crisis communication, particularly in social media (Zheng et al , 2020).…”

“…That is why social media represents immediate and exclusive sources of information through which the consumer seeks insider information about corporate crisis situations (Lamberton and Stephen, 2016), particularly in this era of active audiences who search for information and share their evaluation reviews in the digital public sphere (Etter et al , 2019). Consumers also recognize the use of these media as a therapy method for social conformance (Zheng et al , 2020), where they find emotional support to recover from the shock of crisis situations (Choi and Lin, 2009; Stephens and Malone, 2009), which in turn provide more support to the public in a postcrisis phase (Liu et al , 2011) and look for information about the reasons behind the company's crisis situations (Kulkarni, 2019). Social media provides a good understanding about the situation and is an important platform to manage corporate crisis situations (Cheng, 2018; Gruber et al , 2015).…”