#Help! An investigation into why consumers use Facebook and Twitter as a platform for company complaints instead of traditional channels

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#Help! An investigation into why consumers use Facebook

and Twitter as a platform for company complaints instead of

traditional channels.

Poppy Anne Morch

11444002

Masters Thesis

Msc. Business Administration: Digital Business

University of Amsterdam

Final Draft

22

nd

_June 2018

Supervisor: Shan Chen

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by Student Poppy Anne Morch who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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List of tables and figures

Figure 1: Overview of codes 38 Figure 2: Comparative analysis summary 39 Figure 3: Proposed framework for social media complaint motivations 41

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Abstract

Due to the rapidly increasing penetration of both social media and the internet, businesses nowadays are adapting to incorporate social media into their everyday activities and business strategies. Although the topic of using corporate social media for marketing purposes is widely addressed in academic literature, the use of corporate social media as a customer service tool, namely for customer complaint handling, remains widely under researched. Understanding what drives consumers to choose a social media platform through which to complain rather than a traditional channel such as telephone, email or letters can greatly aid businesses in developing social media strategies to meet their customers’ needs. This study aims to investigate what it is about social media, namely Facebook and Twitter, which appeals to consumers when they are initiating a complaint to a company. It aims to find out what motivates consumers to choose social media as a platform through which to complain and also investigates if such motivations are influenced by age, as younger generations have experienced greater exposure to, and grown up with, both digital technology and social media. The study contributes to the literature with the creation of a theoretical framework to understanding consumer complaint motivations on social media. It reveals that consumers are motivated by four main factors: convenience, the effect of visibility, platform specific features and social/community factors. It also identifies that such motivations are moderated by three factors: context, de-motivating factors and age. This qualitative study paves the way for more empirical research regarding the

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1 Introduction

8 years ago Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) defined social media as “group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of UGC” [user generated content] (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010:61). Social networks initially began as a tool to connect and interact with friends, however during their short life they have evolved to become omnipresent in almost every aspect of our society, from connecting with new people with similar interests, to finding out about events in the local community, also as a form of recruitment and as a means of information dissemination. Social media increasingly finds itself moving away from a private concept shared between family and friends to a concept so connected and useful for some businesses that it is an integral part of their business model. In only 14 years of operation Facebook has managed to dominate not only the social media world but also the lives of the global population becoming the most used social network worldwide, with 2.167 billion monthly active users, (WeAreSocial in Statista, 2018) with microblogging service Twitter being founded just 2 years later in 2006.

Social media has changed the business-customer interaction, making it less controlled by the business, opening up the dialogue, allowing customer creation of content, and empowering consumers to raise their voices (Capriotti and Kuklinski, 2012 in Ruehl & Ingenhoff, 2015). Social media “allows firms to engage in timely and direct end-consumer contact at relatively low cost and higher levels of efficiency than can be achieved with more traditional communication tools” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010:67). Such characteristics have led to increasing and extensive use of social media by firms as a marketing tool, yet another role for it also exists: that of a customer service tool to benefit both businesses and consumers alike. One such aspect of this is complaint handling, a process which has fundamentally changed with the growth in corporate use of social media. Although complaint handling is not a new phenomenon, what is new is

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the ability to complain so quickly, easily and publicly, via the use of a social network. It is well documented and understood that handling complaints efficiently and effectively is vital for a business, as it can drive loyalty and even increase repurchase intentions (Cambra-Fierro, Melero, & Sese, 2015; Einwiller & Steilen, 2015; Homburg & Fürst, 2005), but it is becoming increasingly important to understand how to effectively handle complaints made on social media, as these are public conversations which can quickly go viral, with potentially disastrous PR consequences if not handled effectively.

The issue of corporate presence and complaint handling on social media is magnified with a new generation of ‘digital natives’: people who don’t just want businesses to have a presence on social media, but they expect it. A digital native is somebody who has been raised in the digital age and so is very competent with digital technologies, meaning they are often big users of Internet applications (Bennett et al., 2008 in Ruehl & Ingenhoff, 2015). Similarly, generation Y consumers have a greater tendency to use social networks, whilst also knowing that they have the power to shape the reputation of a business (Ureña et al., 2015) so as this generation grows, the need to be prepared to effectively handle complaining customers on social media increases.

The changing landscape of consumer and corporate use of social media has led to the emergence of new questions for practitioners and an increasing need to be prepared to face consumers who are taking to social media to publicly complain about a company, often attracting attention due to the viral nature of social media. Such questions include: what is it about social media that makes consumers want to complain so publicly and share their problems? Do consumers do this because they believe it is the quickest and easiest way to generate a response from the company or is it an act of naming and shaming a company to get back at them for an issue? Do consumers want others to see their issues in order to help and inform others or is social media complaining purely to benefit oneself?

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Studies have been done to investigate why people engage in online word of mouth (for example Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004)) and the motivation behind this, however most of this work is currently outdated and there is yet to be any empirical studies investigating why consumers choose to complain on social media. Although similarities may exist, engaging in online word of mouth and complaining to a company on social media are distinctly different in that social media offers the ability to engage in a dialogue with a company and to address them directly. In this case complaining to a company on social media offers a way for a consumer to tackle and potentially solve an issue they have, rather than just simply expressing such experiences to other consumers online. Additionally, the exponential growth of social media has made it omnipresent in our lives with a level of penetration that distinguishes it from online word of mouth even further. These are evidently two different forms of consumer behaviour and thus will be associated with different consumer motivations. Consequently there exists a significant research gap regarding consumer complaint motivations on social media that could provide interesting insights. This paper aims to fill this research gap by answering the following questions: What drives consumers to complain to a company about a

grievance via Facebook and Twitter rather than using traditional communication channels such as letters, email and phone calls? and Are these motivations influenced by age?

Understanding both the intrinsic motivation behind a social media complaint and any potential generational effect will pave the way for practitioners to design and develop appropriate strategies and tools to handle them.

This study will follow the design of a qualitative consumer research study, using a combination of semi-structured interviews and comparative analysis to answer my research questions. A sample of five digital natives and five non-digital natives is used, attained after applying a heterogeneous purposive sampling technique. The results obtained contribute to the literature by addressing the research gap on why consumers complain on social media whilst also bringing the research in this area up to date. The

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main contribution of this study comes in the creation of a theoretical framework summarizing the four main motivations of consumers to complain on social media, moderated by three additional factors. Additionally, the results of this study pave the way for supplementary research in this field, opening up many avenues for future research. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. First the existing literature is reviewed to gain an understanding of the current state of the theoretical field and to appreciate the gap that needs to be addressed. Next, the theoretical framework used in this study is explained. The methods and structure of the proposed research will also be described, followed by a summary of the results and then an interpretation in the form of a discussion. To conclude, the implications of the study - both practical and theoretical - will be addressed, alongside the study’s limitations, leading into possible directions for future research. From here on in and for the purpose of this paper, the terms ‘social media’ and ‘social network’ will refer exclusively to Facebook and Twitter, as these are the social networks that allow open interaction between customer and company and that are most used by businesses (Clutch, 2017), although it is recognised that many other networks belong to this category and can also be useful tools for businesses.

2 Theory

2.1 Literature review

The following section will review the existing literature regarding why and how businesses are using social media for customer service, the importance of handling complaints on social media, and why consumers might engage in posting electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM) online.

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2.1.1 The use of corporate social media as a customer service tool

Social media has been widely adopted as a marketing tool (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010; Sreenivasan, Lee, & Goh, 2012; Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014; Ureña, Murillo, Murillo, & Garza, 2015) but its use beyond marketing goes relatively unrecognized (Gunton & Davis, 2012). Hence, some firms are doing little to capitalize on the potential benefits associated with corporate social media as a customer service tool. For some businesses as little as 20% of page activity is dedicated to management of customer issues (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014) yet such behaviour can carry many benefits. These include easy access to a wide consumer base that may have been previously inaccessible, the ability to engage with customers to boost satisfaction, being able to listen to customers’ grievances and efficiently respond, and improving reputation by publicly responding to customer issues (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011; Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014). Richter, Muhlestein, & Wilks (2014) note that in the US hospital industry, there is a failure to engage with customers on social media, suggesting that this is a huge lost customer service opportunity. Although addressing a niche market segment, this paper demonstrates that social media is becoming an increasingly useful customer service tool that still remains underutilized by businesses today.

However simply accepting the use of social media is not enough; businesses need to fully understand the importance of engaging with customers and of having a clear social media strategy. Grančay (2014) identified 3 approaches to Facebook communication with customers: this could be fully bi-directional (two-way) conversation, one-way communication used purely for the presentation of information or unmonitored bi-directional communication, in which dialogue from the customers is allowed but ignored. Although the latter two are the preferred strategies by many businesses, they are undesirable as they have little impact on brand attitude or purchase intention, where a strategy of dialogue and conversation might (Colliander, Dahlén, & Modig, 2015). Similarly, allowing consumers to elaborate their concerns on a corporate

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Facebook page and then subsequently ignoring them can have more of a detrimental effect than if the posts were not allowed in the first place (Grančay, 2014). This divergence in motivation between customers who want answers on social media and businesses who want to use it purely as a marketing tool (Ureña et al., 2015) represents a barrier to effective customer service. Engaging in dialogue and conversations with customers has been shown to be the more effective strategy (Colliander, Dahlén, & Modig, 2015; Trainor et al., 2014) which if executed correctly can substantially increase business value. This sentiment is echoed by Klaus (2013), who finds that communication plays a significant role both during and after a purchase. One such role is that of risk-reduction, putting customers at ease and increasing satisfaction. Similarly, in times of crisis when complaints are higher in both volume and urgency, communication via social media can be an extremely useful tool, satisfying both customer and business needs (Bygstad & Presthus, 2013; Champoux, Durgee, & McGlynn, 2012).

The majority of the previously mentioned literature is Facebook-centric, yet Twitter is also a valuable business and customer service tool (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011). The ability to search for hashtags allows companies to not only search for and respond to queries effectively but it also allows a form of social listening, for firms to gauge consumer sentiment in the market (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010), as modeled by Dell (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011). Additionally Bhattacharjya, Ellison, & Tripathi (2016) investigated the customer-service provision of logistics related businesses on Twitter, analysing not only individual tweets, but also whole conversations between business and consumers. They note that the business value of corporate use of Twitter is significant and derives from the ability to not only reach out to customers and resolve issues more quickly, but in being seen to do so by others. This microblogging service can evidently be a source of much value for a business, yet it still remains an underutilized asset. Sreenivasan, Lee, & Goh (2012) report that just one quarter of the posts they analysed within 3 companies in the airline industry were addressing a customer issue.

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Although this only tackles the airline industry, it is useful for understanding current corporate social media use and for highlighting the fact that it is a source of value that businesses should be keen to tap into.

Work has been conducted into analysing corporate social media as a customer service tool (Bhattacharjya, Ellison, & Tripathi, 2016; Bygstad & Presthus, 2013; Champoux, Durgee, & McGlynn, 2012; Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010; Grančay, 2014; Richter, Muhlestein, & Wilks, 2014; Ureña et al., 2015), highlighting the motivations for corporate social media use and the associated benefits from a business perspective. However little of the research takes a consumer-centric view, looking at why consumers themselves are using corporate social media as a way to seek customer service. Understanding consumer motivations behind complaints is essential for developing effective strategies on how to respond to such comments and complaints.

Canhoto & Clark (2013) began to address the benefits users perceive that they gain from interacting with organisations online, although they chose to evaluate such benefits within the framework of social capital theory. They aimed to discover what kinds of support consumers feel they achieve from such conversations, suggesting potential motivations for engaging in such dialogue. However their paper focuses on benefits rather than driving forces for dialog initiation and although these may have crossovers, this means that there still exists a gap in the literature as to what actually motivates consumers to complain to a company on a corporate social media page.

The previous literature explains how companies can benefit from using social media as a customer service tool, honing in on the idea of complaint handling: an issue which is becoming increasingly important to understand in the era of social media.

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2.1.2 Complaint handling on social media

Complaint handling is an age-old issue that is well understood to be vital to the customer service success of a business. A customer complaint occurs when a customer has a grievance (problem or fault) with a company’s product or service that has left them unsatisfied, meaning they may then voice this issue to the relevant company in the form of a complaint.

Effective complaint handling is shown to drive customer loyalty, boost positive word of mouth and improve profitability (Cambra-Fierro, Melero, & Sese, 2015; Einwiller & Steilen, 2015; Homburg & Fürst, 2005) and, if not handled properly, can greatly damage a business’ reputation (Canhoto & Clark, 2013). Similarly, following a grievance, effective complaint handling becomes the main driver of customer loyalty, regardless of previous levels of customer satisfaction (Homburg & Fürst, 2005), thus it is clearly a concept that businesses should strive to master. The growth of Generation Y amplifies this need, as this demographic is statistically more likely to complain (and to do so online) than their older generational peers since they are digital natives who have grown up in a world of technology (Soares et al., 2017). Additionally, a service recovery paradox exists in that handling a customer complaint successfully can actually produce a customer who is more satisfied following the complaint and recovery process than had there been no complaint in the first place. Again, this paradox is more evident amongst members of Generation Y, a generation that alongside being inclined to complain more often is also more likely to repurchase and stick with a company following a satisfactory complaint handling process (ibid.). This highlights the importance of successful complaint handling, a need that has been heightened by the advent of social media. The growth of corporate social media is changing the way that people complain, empowering consumers to express themselves more easily and publicly than ever before (Gunarathne, Xuaxia, & Seidmann, 2017; Ye, 2016). Similarly, the public nature of social networks offers the potential for customer

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complaints to go viral, quickly reaching thousands of users globally (Tripp & Grégoire, 2011; Ye, 2016). If not handled properly, this can have a hugely detrimental effect on company image that can be difficult to erase, thus it is imperative to understand these complaints, what drives them and how to respond effectively so as to minimize bad publicity. Such a need is reflected perfectly in the case of Nestlé who, in response to negative comments on their Facebook page, adopted a strategy of censorship and thus deleted any negative posts to their page hoping to eliminate the problem (Champoux, Durgee, & McGlynn, 2012). However this retaliatory response simply fuelled the fire, with people angry that they were being ignored and thus created a PR nightmare much worse than the initial negative comments, underlining the need to have in place an appropriate social media strategy. Censorship is a risky strategy that is likely to anger consumers who feel that they are not being listened to (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010), so it is not necessarily the best approach when dealing with complaints on social media. Other examples of complaint handling gone wrong include the famous “United Breaks Guitars” in which United Airlines damaged customer Dave Carroll’s guitar and failed to respond to his complaints, leading to him publicising those complaints via a song on YouTube, gaining 20,000 views in less than 24 hours and quickly going viral (Istanbulluoglu, 2017). There was also an incident with Hewlett Packard (HP) in which they wanted to charge a customer for advice on how to fix a printer, angering the customer (a soldier in Iraq), leading him to film and post a video of him shooting the printer to pieces online (Tripp & Grégoire, 2011).

Instead of viewing online complaints as something negative that need to be erased, companies can use the viral nature of social media as an opportunity to appease not only the unhappy customer but also the many other number of other online users that may see the conversation, shaping their reputation as they go (Einwiller & Steilen, 2015). Just as the Nestlé dilemma went viral, so might a dialogue in which a company deals with an issue in a professional and appropriate manner; such social media

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conversations, if done correctly, can be used to a company’s advantage to turn a negative opportunity into a positive one. Being seen to respond to issues publicly can be a great source of business value (Bhattacharjya, Ellison, & Tripathi, 2016).

As well as making it easier to complain online, social media has also altered customer expectations when it comes to complaint handling, especially regarding response time. The average expected response time on social media has been found to be within 3-6 hours of the complaint being made, half that of the traditional channel counterpart (6-12 hours) (Istanbulluoglu, 2017). This stands not only for initial contact but also for a conclusive response (ibid.). Traditional communication channels can be defined as letters, emails or phone calls (Einwiller & Steilen, 2015). Seemingly customers have higher expectations when it comes to response time on social media - potentially this is one of the main driving forces behind it - and it follows that meeting this expectation can increase customer satisfaction (ibid). Despite this, in some cases, companies are not responding as quickly as expected, if at all (Einwiller & Steilen, 2015; Sreenivasan, Lee, & Goh, 2012), leading to customer dissatisfaction and a missed customer service opportunity. Having said that, Einwiller and Steilen (2015) found that in their study of large US companies’ Twitter and Facebook pages, speed was not essential in achieving satisfaction, representing a contradiction in the literature and consequently a confusion for practitioners as to what consumers want. Thus it is imperative to discover the main driving factors behind consumers complaining online so that firms can be sure that they are meeting customer needs.

Another altered expectation brought about by social media is that consumers seem to want the whole dialogue to take place on the relevant social media platform, despite its public nature, rather than to simply be diverted back to the traditional channels. Notwithstanding this, it appears that a lot of companies would rather not publicly address complaints; hence a frequent tactic of encouraging diversions occurs (Bhattacharjya, Ellison, & Tripathi, 2016; Einwiller & Steilen, 2015). This could either be

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to avoid public scrutiny, or to protect consumers’ privacy, but either way it is leaving many consumers unsatisfied.

As effective complaint handling is so important businesses should be prepared as to how best to respond online. Some research exists offering guidelines for the best way to handle such issues, including being clear and transparent about the complaint handling process, making sure to listen to and engage with the customers, acknowledging their issues and owning up to mistakes, and responding in a timely matter (Istanbulluoglu, 2017; Tripp & Grégoire, 2011; Ye, 2016). Similarly, if apologizing, a company should ensure that this is sincere and that they are conveying genuine emotions (or at least they appear to be), as doing otherwise may be worse than simply not apologizing at all (Gruber, 2011; Tripp & Grégoire, 2011). It has been demonstrated that the complainants want to feel like they are being listened to, and that the complaint handler should be competent enough to know what needs to be done to resolve the issue (Gruber, 2011). When handling complaints it is also important to note what kind of customer you are dealing with as this can alter the ideal response: do they value the relationship with the company so an apology will suffice or are they a casual customer only caring about financial redress (ibid.)? However, this distinction is not always easy to make. Whilst the above does offer companies some useful guidelines, properly understanding consumers’ motivations will enable the production of guidelines specifically tailored at meeting their needs, meaning businesses can design social media strategies to handle customer grievances in the most satisfactory manner. Looking at the literature on why consumers post e-Word of Mouth online is the first step in this direction.

2.1.3 Why post e-Word of Mouth online?

Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WoM) can be defined as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company,

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which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet” (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004: 39) and is something that, thanks to the development of the internet, has increased exponentially. Despite this, surprisingly little literature exists that examines consumer motivations for complaining online (as an alternative to traditional means), and that which exists either focuses simply on online review platforms such as TripAdvisor and epinions.com or could potentially be considered outdated (for example Hennig-Thurau et al., (2004)).

Motivations for engaging in e-WoM on online review websites can be divided into 3 categories, with consumers aiming to benefit either themselves, benefit others or benefit the company, or often a combination of these factors (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004; Verhagen, Nauta, & Feldberg, 2013). This categorisation of motivations is supported by Istanbulluoglu (2017), who argues that complaint objectives can be private (benefitting family and friends) or public (benefitting self, seeking redress/venting).

Motivations to help oneself could include simply drawing attention to the problem so that it can be resolved - in some cases related to economic motivations such as seeking redress-, for positive self-enhancement or perhaps as a venting mechanism to reduce anger levels and frustrations (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004; Istanbulluoglu, 2017; Verhagen, Nauta, & Feldberg, 2013; Labsomboonsiri, Mathews, & Luck, 2017). Relaxation has also been found to be a form of intrinsic personal motivation that drives e-WoM behaviour (Labsomboonsiri, Mathews, & Luck, 2017).

The idea of helping others can seemingly play a large role in driving this consumer behaviour. Consumers not only want to stimulate empathy, but also to warn and inform others about potential problems, strengthen social ties, entertain others and use such behaviour to seek help and support: this relates to the idea of social sharing (Labsomboonsiri, Mathews, & Luck, 2017; Sen & Lerman, 2007; Sparks & Browning, 2010; Verhagen, Nauta, & Feldberg, 2013). Social motivations for complaining are

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amplified amongst generation Y, a generation who value friends and relatives and the opinions of peers very highly (Soares et al. 2017). Labsomboonsiri, Mathews, & Luck (2017) show that consumers seek both social and emotional support when engaging in e-WoM and the need to belong can also play an important role (Chen et al. 2014). In some cases consumers are solely motivated by a desire to help others and not to benefit themselves, although Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) documented that the true altruists contributed to online review platforms least often, a sentiment supported by Chen et al. (2014).

It is important to view negative e-WoM not just as angry consumers voicing their frustrations online, but it can also be indicative of subsequent behavioural responses (Verhagen, Nauta, & Feldberg, 2013). Moreover for some, informing companies about potential issues with their products or services forms the primary motivation for engaging in e-WoM – to help companies recognize problems and change their practices. Thus, e-WoM can be a valuable source of information to a business.

Interestingly, Tripp & Grégoire (2011) found that most of the customers for whom they analysed online complaints - 96% - had been victims of a ‘double deviation’, in that not only had they suffered a grievance with a product or service, but they also subsequently encountered many failed attempts to resolve this issue through other channels. This sentiment is supported in Sparks & Browning (2010) who find that the majority of the complaints which they analysed arose following an unresovled initial complaint. Hence this could point to a motivation for using online platforms to engage in e-WoM as a last resort to drive action when traditional channels seem to be ineffective.

Although the above begins to address the question of what motivates customers to engage in online word of mouth, it points to motivations for using designated online review platforms, thus the research on choosing a social media platform over a traditional channel remains limited.

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The preceding literature review has revealed significant studies on the impact that using corporate social media as a business tool can have. It demonstrates where value can be created with regards to customer service, expresses the importance of effective complaint handling both in general and on social media and discusses some motivations behind posting word of mouth reviews online. However what remains to be addressed is the motivations of the consumers who are using social media specifically as the channel of communication, given that they already intend to complain. We know why businesses can and should use social media as a customer service tool, but we do not yet know why customers do. We know why customers post reviews on online review sites but not why they may complain specifically on social networking sites, given that they are going to complain. Istanbulluoglu (2017) hints at the idea that customers complaining on social media have different motivations, while Bhattacharjya, Ellison, & Tripathi (2016) suggest that the value for consumers lies in the ability to resolve their own queries and also to view the resolution of those of others, learning from their experiences. Canhoto & Clark (2013) start to look at the support that consumers expect to gain; yet to the best of my knowledge there does not exist a concrete piece of literature identifying the specific motivations of consumers themselves when they choose to complain via social media rather than via a traditional channel. Additionally, Colliander, Dahlén, & Modig (2015) argue that “when communication about companies or brands online is no longer taking place between consumers [i.e. it is customer-to-business] then it can no longer be considered e-WOM” (Colliander, Dahlén, & Modig, 2015: 182). This means that the motivations for engaging in complaining behaviour on social media may be completely different to those of posting e-WoM touched on above.

Here lies a significant gap in the literature that this paper aims to address under the following research questions:

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Research Question 1: What drives consumers to complain to a company about a grievance via Facebook and Twitter rather than using traditional communication channels such as letters, email and phone calls?

Research Question 2: Are these motivations influenced by age?

Research Question 2 distinguishes between consumers who are digital natives and consumers who are not digital natives. Ruehl & Ingenhoff (2015) note that digital natives are people born from 1985 onwards and this generation is commonly known as the ‘millenials’, whilst Generation Z, born in the mid 1990s, are also digital natives for whom social media is one of the most prevalent modes of communication (Kaur, 2014 in Kick, Contacos-Sawyer, & Thomas, 2015). For the purpose of this study the term ‘digital natives’ will refer to consumers born from 1995 onwards, as this falls into the ‘mid-1990s category’.

Answering these questions will carry many practical implications for businesses, as well as contributing to the existing theoretical literature by addressing the identified empirical research gap. For instance only when practitioners truly understand exactly why consumers complain on a social media forum can they derive effective and appropriate complaint handling strategies. Understanding what drives consumers is greatly important in being able to properly address their concerns and meet their needs by recognising what they truly want to gain from the interaction: if you know what motivates a consumer, it is much easier to meet their desires and achieve customer satisfaction. Once consumers’ motivations are understood, businesses will be able to develop effective social media strategies so as to avoid PR nightmares such as those seen by HP and United Airlines. Similarly, businesses can then train people to handle grievances in a way that is aligned with consumer interests, hopefully boosting satisfaction rates and thus benefitting the company’s reputation.

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2.2 Theoretical framework

In his 2004 study, Hennig-Thuarau et al. offered 8 factors that may motivate a consumer to engage in e-WOM. Due to the lack of literature regarding the motivation of consumers to complain via a social media channel rather than a traditional channel, I will therefore use these 8 factors as a guiding framework to aid my research and analysis, although it is acknowledged that due to the differences in complaining to a company via social media and engaging in e-WOM, this framework may not be perfectly applicable. The motives will be used to prompt and probe discussion during the interviews thus they are discussed below, focusing on how they could be related to channel choice and specifically to social media when complaining to a company.

‘Platform assistance’ refers to the potential support to be gained from using a platform, combined with convenience of articulation, the latter of which could definitely be applicable to social media due to the ease of complaining in such a way. Maintaining an active social media profile means it can be very easy to complain to a company. A tweet can be composed and sent in a matter of seconds due to its short 280 character nature, meaning contact with a company can be swift. Similarly a key characteristic of Twitter is it’s real-time nature (Sakaki, Okazaki, & Matsuo, 2010) meaning that you can complain to a company as and when an issue arises, be that at home, at work or anywhere with a mobile connection or wifi signal, again demonstrating the ease of complaining in such a way. It follows that the convenience of having a social media profile affects the motivation for complaining on social networks. ‘Venting negative feelings’ may be a motive for consumers to complain on either social or traditional channels, yet the advantage that choosing social media may offer is the ability to publicly name and shame a company and embarrass them, in a way making them pay for the inconvenience caused. Social networks offer consumers a public forum to vent anger about a situation and a platform from which to try to seek action from the offending company. Even though complaints on social media are directly addressed to a

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company, they are visible for the whole online community to see, meaning that consumers can publicly besmirch the company at the same time. This is reflected in Tripp & Grégoire’s (2011) findings that when customers feel betrayed by a company, they can then become much more persistent when asking for reparations, often taking to social media to vent their frustrations.

‘Concern for others’ in this context relates to the idea of wanting to warn other people about potential problems with products or services, something that is inherently easier to do using a public social media page than a more private traditional manner of complaining. Although complaints are directed to the companies themselves, they are still visible to the online community, therefore the capacity to help others whilst complaining may motivate the use of a social media channel. For some, posting complaints on a social network may be a means of informing others, as people often use Twitter to inform others about events (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2014).

‘Extraversion/positive self-enhancement’ is a motive related to a consumers’ psychological makeup and their potential desire to articulate positive feelings, combined with self enhancement. Relevant to this study is the possibilty that a consumer may achieve some form of self-enhancement by expressing negative feelings on social media, especially if a complaint is seen and reacted to - for example retweeted, liked, commented on - by another consumer as this may add to their co-constructed sense of self (Belk, 2013) and may occur despite the fact that the complaints are directed primarily at the company themselves.

When Hennig-Thurau et al., (2004) discussed ‘social benefits’, they were referring to the social support and integration that a consumer may feel when participating in and being a part of an online community. Although social networks are a form of a global social community, this motive is likely to be less prevalant when choosing the channel through which to complain as this study is investigating the motivation to complain directly to a company, not to inform a community. Having said

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that, the fact that others may see and potentially respond to your complaint could have an impact.

‘Economic incentives’ include receiving compensation for the inconvenience of an issue. It is likely that this may arise from either a social media complaint or a complaint through a traditional channel, however social media offers two advantages, namely a time advantage and a visibility advantage. As explained by Istanbulluoglu (2017) consumers have much higher expectations when it comes to response times on social media; they expect companies to respond twice as quickly. Thus, the “simplicity and timeliness of delivering customer service through social media” (Gunarathne, Xuaxia, & Seidmann, 2017: 315) could form a primary motivation for complaining in such a way, reducing the time taken to gain the so desired economic reward. The viral nature and visibility of social media complaints can also drive the company into action and make them more likely to respond to a customer, potentially increasing the chance of compensation, as they are aware that if these are not handled appropriately the situation could worsen, as occurred with ‘United Breaks Guitars’. Naveed et al. (2015) documented that a tweet containing displeasing information is more likely to get retweeted and reach a much wider audience, so it is in the company’s interest to be seen to publicly respond to these issues. Moreover Kwak et al. (2010) showed that regardless of how many followers a Twitter user may have, if one of their tweets is retweeted, it can reach 1,000 users meaning that every user has power to spread information broadly, regardless of influence in terms of number of followers. Combining this with Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan’s (2014) finding that emotionally charged tweets were more likely to be retweeted gives a complaining customer an incentive to share their negative experiences online in order to get this retweeted into the public domain and to drive action from the company. This negativity bias contributes to the idea that consumers may feel that they are more likely to see action and response from a company in the form of economic redress when they receive a complaint on social media, as such

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complaints are visible and the company will want to preserve their image, thus forming a motivation for consumers to complain in this way.

‘Helping the company’ touches on the idea that by complaining to a company about a grievance, you are informing them of an issue so that this can be rectified and fixed so that it doesn’t happen again. It could be that this factor is not channel specific, as no matter the platform through which you choose to complain, you are informing the company about the issue, thus this factor may not arise as a key motive from the study. The only potential benefit social media may offer here over a traditional channel is that a complaint made in this way is generally quicker and so the company may have the information earlier.

Finally, ‘advice seeking’ refers to the idea that by posting something online, others may respond to you with suggestions or potential solutions. Again it is important to stress that the definition of a complaint in this study is one that is directed to a company, so advice seeking is unlikely to be the main reason someone chooses such a channel, yet it may contribute to part of the motivation. Consider the case in which somebody has a faulty product and so contacts the company on Twitter complaining and asking how to get a refund. Another consumer on Twitter may see this and respond with how they solved their issue, thus offering useful advice to the consumer. This is something that could not happen when complaining via a letter, email or phone call, as this is not public and visible to the online community and so may contribute to the decision to complain in this way.

3 Methodology

The following section describes the design of my study, including how and why I selected the sample and the steps involved in the both the data collection and the analysis procedures with steps towards increasing the rigor of the study.

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3.1 Research design

The previous literature review revealed a distinct lack of empirical research into why consumers may choose social media as the channel by which they mean to complain. Thus the study is exploratory in nature as it is beginning research into this topic; hence a qualitative consumer research study was the most appropriate. Within this approach, semi-structured interviews were the most applicable method for data collection, allowing the gathering of as much in-depth and information rich data as possible on this relatively under researched topic. Additionally, opting for interviews that are semi-structured allows open-ended questions and the possibility to gather a wide range of data whilst also including a list of themes to help guide discussion (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2012). This helps to keep the interviews focused and directed towards effectively answering the research questions. The data collected will be purely qualitative, arising from the interviews, thus it is a mono-method study. The fact that the research initially begins by using semi-structured interviews to explore and comprehend social interactions, then moves on to build theory regarding consumers motivations for choosing social media channels when complaining suggests that it can be described as taking an inductive approach. However due to the inclusion of the framework by Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) into the research, this study is party based on theory, thus the research is taking an approach that is a combination of inductive and deductive.

3.2 Sample and procedure

After initially deciding upon the research approach, the first step to be addressed was that of sampling in order to determine my candidates for interview. Due to the nature of qualitative research a non-probability sampling technique was to be the

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best fit for the study as it would not be required to make statistical inferences about a whole population and it would not be possible to interview people representative of the whole population. Subsequently the purposive sampling technique was selected, as it is a method of selecting candidates “that will best enable you to answer your research question(s) and to meet your objectives” (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2012: 287). Due to the second research question including a distinction between two different ages of people, digital natives born after 1995 and having grown up with social media and non-digital natives (Kaur, 2014 in Kick, Contacos-Sawyer, & Thomas, 2015), it was imperative that when selecting candidates for interview, there were enough from each subsection of consumers. Thus purposive sampling works well here as it allows selection of candidates to specifically make sure that the research question can be answered. Moreover, heterogeneous sampling is a further subset of purposive sampling that involves ensuring variation in the data by selecting a wide range of cases (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2012). I felt that selecting candidates with a diverse range of ages helps to achieve this. Initially, it was decided that 5 consumers from each age group would be interviewed, as this should provide enough depth and breadth into consumer’s motivations, whilst allowing for an effective comparison between the two age groups. Within the non-digital age group, there was one candidate who did not maintain a Facebook or Twitter profile at all. They were included to add some useful breadth to my results, offering a perspective on social media complaints from somebody who preferred traditional methods and to understand the perception of social media complaint behaviour from someone who has never needed to engage in it before.

In order to find and approach candidates to interview, the university campus was used as this contains a high population of consumers from both age categories. During this process, it was much easier to identify candidates who were digital natives than those who were not, and due to some candidates scheduling requirements not all

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candidates could be interviewed face to face: two interviews were conducted over the phone to suit the interviewee’s requirements. The remaining 8 interviews were face-to-face, taking place at a location determined by the individual candidates so that they would feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible when undertaking the interviews. This was important as the data collection could potentially be affected by the choice of location, especially if the candidate felt uncomfortable or on edge (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2012).

In terms of the interviews themselves, they were to last between 30 and 45 minutes and would be audio recorded and subsequently transcribed. To respect privacy and confidentiality, the interviews and the candidates involved remained anonymous, helping to address any ethical concerns the participants may have. In each interview it was confirmed with the interviewee their consent to an audio recording of the interview. In the interest of transparency, at the start of each interview the time was taken to explain to each participant the purpose and aims of the study so they were familiar with the intentions of the study.

Initially, basic questions regarding the candidates’ general social media use were posed to ease the interviewee into the session and make them feel comfortable with the topic and the style of the interview, gradually moving to more focused questions about previous complaint behaviour and then onto social media complaining. This approach was followed to give the participant some time to acclimatize to the setting and get into the mindset of social media use and complaining behaviour, rather than going straight in with the critical topics. This is because it is imperative in an interview that the interviewee feels comfortable and relaxed so that they are willing to share and contribute as much information as possible and the interview can be as effective as possible (ibid.).

In accordance with Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill (2012), to aid my interview a list of themes and questions to possibly be covered in the interviews was used, which

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would assist, probe and prompt discussion should it be required. The aforementioned list of motivations for complaining on e-WOM as discussed by Hennig-Thurau et al., (2004) was used as the list of guiding themes to investigate whether these motivational factors were indeed applicable to a social media complaining situation. Moreover this list would ensure that a wide range of potentially motivating factors were covered to contribute to the breadth of data collected. Throughout the interviews probing questions were used to ensure the data collected was as rich and in depth as possible. This involved asking things such as ‘why do you feel this way?’, ‘could you give an example of that?’ and ‘could you expand on that for me?’. Additionally, as the interviews were coming to a close each interviewee was offered the chance to add anything at all that they deemed to be appropriate or relevant to make sure that as much data was collected as possible, also enriching the study as the interviewee may have additional comments which had not already come to light as a result of the previous discussion. This also helped to avoid limiting the results to the motivations offered by Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004). A copy of the interview protocol derived from Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) and used in these interviews can be seen in Appendix 1.

Following each interview, the voice recording was used to transcribe and properly document the conversations that were had. These were all checked and double checked, as it is imperative that the transcripts are accurate so that effective and reliable data analysis can be conducted. Once the checks were done, the transcripts were then forwarded to each participant so that they could verify that the content and key takeaways represented their thoughts and portrayed the image that they intended to. This informant verfication procedure was done to improve the overall validity of my study (Johnson & Vogt, 2005).

3.3 Data analysis

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The data analysis process involved coding the transcribed interviews with the help of NVivo version 11.4.3 for Mac, a qualitative data analysis software. This software aids the coding process by helping to organise and analyse the data and the associated codes. A three stage coding process of open, axial and selective coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was followed to move from a long list of codes describing the content of the interviews, to a concise list of themes that were to form the basis of the proposed theoretical framework. To begin with there were also some starter codes resulting from the fact that the themes from Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) were used in the interviews. During the open coding process, codes are created throughout the transcripts describing what is happening in the interview, starting to label thoughts and concepts within the transcripts. Beginning with the first interveiw, the relevant codes were created and then continued with the remaining transcripts, assigning the text to the existing codes or creating new ones when applicable. The result of the open coding process was a long list of different codes for the 10 interviews.

Subsequently, in the axial coding stage, this long list began to be reduced by categorising the codes and identifying possible relationships between them. A pivotal decision to segment the codes into ‘motivating’ and ‘de-motivating’ factors was made here. A hierachy was created with these two categories as ‘parent’ nodes and the associated codes the ‘children’. A de-motivating category was needed as many candidates felt that some of the themes did not motivate them at all or in fact de-motivated them to choose a social media platform by which to complain and such information is still highly useful and relevant in answering the first research question. The hierachy was created to improve the structure of the nodes and to help visualise how the codes were fitting into the research question. One more parent node was also created here: that of contextual factors, as these may not be directly motivating or de-motivating however they can have an effect overall on consumers’ motivations, thus contained information important for answering the first research question.

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In the final stage the long list of child axial codes was narrowed down further, collapsing the codes into a short list of themes. In this stage the codes were reduced and grouped together so that connections between them could be understood and the most common and prevalent themes would emerge: such themes were representative of major ideas that arose from the interviews and were additionally most frequently discussed with the most evidence (Creswell, 2012). This stage was important to understand the key driving forces of consumer motivations, as these final themes would eventually help to form the new theoretical framework.

As well as the coding procedure I also undertook constant comparative analysis (Yin, 2009) by creating two comparative analysis tables: one for each age group, these can be seen in Appendix 2. This process was undertaken to help answer the second research question. These tables displayed the themes of Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) in one column and then the following columns displayed the reactions of each interviewee to each theme, discussing whether or not they considered them to motivate them to choose to complain via a social media platform. Both quotes and comments about their attitude to each theme were included. Additionally, the tables were colour coded to offer a visual interpretation of the results: a red cell meant that the interviewee did not consider the factor to be motivating, green represented something that would motivate them to choose a social media platform, and orange represented partial motivation. As well as including the list of themes, the tables also included the answer to the question of which platform the candidate thought would be more effective for a complaint out of Facebook and Twitter. A dark blue cell represented Facebook and a light blue cell represented Twitter. Comments and quotes were also added here. Following the creation of both of these tables, two smaller summary tables were created (see section 4) with no text but simply the coloured cells, to offer a more simple visual interpretation of the comparison.

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3.4 Rigor of the study

An informant verification procedure was used to improve the reliability of the study. Informant verification can be described as “the practice of researchers submitting their data or findings to their informants (members) in order to make sure they correctly represented what their informants told them” (Johnson & Vogt, 2005:190-191). It is crucial in ensuring that the data to be analysed is truthful and accurate and that an incorrect interpretation of what has been revealed during interviews is not being analysed. This process was achieved in this study by emailing the typed transcript of each interview to each candidate and asking for written confirmation that the document accurately reflected their sentiments.

A step taken towards ensuring construct validity included the development of a sound interview protocol, (see Appendix 1), to help ensure that the interviews were used appropriately to investigate my research questions. Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill (2012) document that a threat to reliability is researcher error, in that lack of preparation or other factors such as tiredness or hunger may cloud the ability to accurately interpret what the interviewee has to say. Thus, rigorous preparation and planning helped to combat this issue. Additionally, in the case that somebody desired to replicate my study, all steps taken were documented in detail and remain highly transparent, as this too contributes to the reliability of the research undertaken.

4 Results

The following section discusses the findings that arose from both the coding of the transcribed interviews working to answer Research Question 1 and the comparative analysis process relevant for Research Question 2.

4.1 Coding results

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The coding process helped to group the thoughts and opinions of the interviewees into key themes. It resulted in the emergence of four key themes that motivated consumers to choose social media as the platform through which to complain, themes which will form the basis of the proposed theoretical framework, along with discovering factors that de-motivated consumers to complain on social media and contextual factors.

4.1.1 Motivating factors

The four themes that were found to motivate consumers to complain on social media were ‘Convenience’, ‘Platform Specific Features’, ‘Social/Community Factors’ and ‘The Effect of Visibility’. Convenience emerged from Hennig-Thurau et al.’s (2004) idea of platform assistance, and covered aspects such as the speed with which a consumer can complain, the ease of complaining via social media and the direct nature of doing so. Candidates felt that “its just so easy and quick” (DN2, 2018) and “its literally just like right there on your fingertips” (DN3, 2018). The nature of social media means that you can complain on your mobile phone through an application which, in the majority of cases, the candidates had downloaded onto their phone and were already logged in, thus the ease with which one can complain is greatly increased. In terms of speed, candidates identified that both the time taken to complain and also the time taken for the relevant company to respond are greatly reduced by social media. Interestingly, for some the speed of response was of great importance, as they would “rather get a quick response straight away, instantly than use email” (DN3, 2018), demonstrating a key driving factor for this consumer. Additionally, candidates felt that social media complaining is much more flexible and able to fit into their own personal schedules, rather than be bound by a company’s office hours as is often seen with traditional methods. As for the direct nature, popular opinion was that with traditional methods it can often take a long time to contact the right department, whether that means having to call different phone

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numbers or going through a long list of options meaning you waste “more time trying to get through to the right department than actually speaking to someone to resolve the issue” (DN2, 2018). However candidates felt that social media was a much more direct method: the “directing to the appropriate department takes place from their social media or comms team” (N2, 2018). All of these facets relate to social media making complaining much more accessible, hence the idea of convenience can be described as a factor which motivates consumers to complain to a company via social media.

Another motivating factor was the idea of platform specific features: traits that social media platforms have that actually make it a better and more appropriate platform through which to complain. A popular feature identified by candidates was Facebook Messenger as this contained the convenience benefits of social media but without the visibility by others that deterred some social media complaints (discussed subsequently). Facebook Messenger has a tool that displays the average response time of the company. The majority of the interviewees actually felt that this feature in itself would motivate them to complain on social media if they could see that the average response time was very low: it “gives you more of a guarantee that you will get a fairly quick response” (N3, 2018). Candidates also said that if the average response time was very long, i.e. ‘typically replies within a few days’ then they might actually be put off complaining to the company in such a way. Other features such as the ability to react to posts on Facebook with different emotions (like, dislike, angry, upset) improves the suitability of social media as complainers can garner support. This can also be seen with the use of polls of social media and thus these would potentially motivate the candidates whom were intereviewed to thus choose social media as the platform through which to complain. Trending topics on Facebook and hashtags on Twitter were noted to “get a lot of publicity for complaints” (DN3, 2018) too, adding to the case that social media platforms contain specific characteristics that improve their suitability for complaining

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and thus in turn motivate consumers to choose them as the platform through which to complain. It emerged that there were a lot of motivations arising from the social aspect of social media, as consumers wanted to help others, find others and be helped by others, with social media offering a way to do this that is not evident in traditional methods of complaining. This category of motivations is described as ‘Social/Community Factors’. Some of the interviewees expressed a desire to learn from other peoples experiences when complaining on social media, whilst also alerting other consumers to potential issues, with this desire increasing motivations to complain on social media: “I’d like to know myself, like from other people who’ve been there if there was a problem so therefore like I’d be more inclined to do the same” (N2, 2018). Some of the candidates also expressed a desire to help the company by choosing social media as their preferred complaint platform, as they can alert them more quickly to an issue. However, generally this desire was only expressed when it was a company close to the candidates heart or if it was out of the ordinary to experience an issue with that particular company. Two of the interviewees noted that they would be motivated by the possibility of receiving social support from the online community on social media, as this would potentially validate their complaint and reassure them that, even if the company was not responding, other people were listening. However this sentiment was not shared by the majority of candidates, as most felt that if they needed support they would turn to their family and friends and not the online community as they felt that the support was “anonymous” (DN1, 2018). For instance, “I don’t feel I need that community support from people I don’t know” (N1, 2018). The final facet of the social/community motivations category related to the ability that social media offers to connect various consumers who are experiencing the same or similar issues, and thus the chance to harness the power of a collective complaint. One interviewee stated “I think if someone would come forward saying “oh that happened to me” it would motivate me to get

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others who felt the same way because then you have more power to complain” (DN2, 2018), identifying an option that can not be found with traditional complaining methods. Social media makes this possible through its design and characteristics: the ability to read other conusmer’s posts, the use of polls and also the ability to search for hashtags and trending topics. Thus social media makes it much easier to connect with other people experiencing the same issue or to join onto a complaint that is gaining traction on social media, something which would not be remotely possible when complaining via traditional methods. Overall, the consumers that I interviewed were motivated to choose social media platform instead of traditional ones when making a complaint due to multiple social and community factors.

The final motivation that was reported was due to ‘The Effect of Visibility’ and the candidates’ beliefs about how the visible nature of social media complaints would enhance their position relative to the company. A common opinion was that companies do not want to gain a bad reputation and due to the visible and viral nature of social media, complaints made this way have the potential to do great harm to the reputation of a company. Thus, in order to avoid this, companies are potentially more likely to both respond to a complaint and to respond more quickly, potentially doing more to appease the complainer than they might do if the complaint took place for example via an email, as the resolution could potentially be seen by thousands of other consumers. One candidate actually stated when describing a previous social media complaint experience that “I feel that had I have emailed them directly I perhaps wouldn’t have got such a prompt and helpful response” (N2, 2018). Building on this, some of the candidates felt that they might also be more likely to receive some sort of financial compensation if they chose social media, as again companies are aware of their public reputation and thus might be more inclined to appease the complainer than when addressing the same situation via a traditional method. One candidate even explained that a member of their family posted on social media purely to receive compensation or “bundles of goodies”

#Help! An investigation into why consumers use Facebook and Twitter as a platform for company complaints instead of traditional channels