How do consumer-to-consumer interactions affect bystanders on corporate social media (CSM)? (In)civility in advocates’ responses and complainant-bystander psychological distance

ABSTRACT

The role of other consumers (i.e. bystanders and brand advocates) in webcare has been underexplored in the setting of CSM. This study fills the void by portraying a dynamic network among the consumer who posts a complaint, the advocate who replies to the complaint, and the bystander who observes the service interaction. Specifically, this study investigated how the tone (civil vs. uncivil) of the advocate’s defensive response affects the bystander’s service evaluation and how the complainant-bystander psychological distance serves as a boundary for the bystander’s information processing. Study 1 revealed that consumer-to-consumer (C2C) interactional justice is the mechanism underlying the relationship between defensive response and satisfaction with complaint handling. Study 2 demonstrated that the bystander’s perceived distance to the failure experience moderates his/her cognitive processing of C2C service interactions such that the mediation (defensive response → C2C interactional justice → satisfaction with complaint handling) is stronger when the bystander feels psychologically closer to the service event. Both theoretical and practical implications regarding service management on CSM channels are also discussed.

摘要

本研究调查品牌拥护者在为品牌辩护中使用的语气对旁观者服务评价的影响，以及投诉者与旁观者的心理距离如何影响旁观者处理相关信息。结果表明，消费者与消费者的互动公平是辩护回复与处理投诉满意度之间关系的潜在机制；旁观者对服务失败经历的感知距离会影响他/她对消费者之间的服务互动的认知。当旁观者对服务失败经历在心理感知上更接近时，关系链（辩护回复→消费者与消费者的互动公平→对投诉处理的满意度）更强。

KEYWORDS:

• C2C service interaction
• bystander
• advocate
• complainant
• social media
• service recovery

关键词:

• 消费者与消费者的互动公平
• 旁观者
• 品牌拥护者
• 投诉者
• 社交网站
• 服务补救

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Alternatively, we ran a moderated mediation model (PROCESS model 7; Hayes, 2013) in which the moderator was treated as a categorical variable. A median-split approach was applied to create two levels of psychological distance to the service failure (1 =  near, 2 = far). The results were consistent in that the interaction between the defensive response and psychological distance was significant (ΔR² = .01, F = 4.52, p < .05). The defensive response had a stronger impact on C2C interactional justice for bystanders with a closer distance to the failure experience (effect = -.82, p < .001, -.96 < 95% CI < -.69) than those with a further distance (effect = -.60, p < .001, -.76 < 95% CI < -.45). In addition, the index of moderated mediation was significant, with an effect of .19 (SE = .09, .02 < 95% CI < .37); the indirect effect of the defensive response on satisfaction via C2C interactional justice for the closer distance group was -.69 (SE = .08, -.85 < 95% CI < -.55), whereas the indirect effect for the farther distance group was -.51 (SE = .07, -.64 < 95% CI < -.38).