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- Title
Brand Crisis and Customer Relationship Management on Social Media: Evidence from a Natural Experiment from the Airline Industry.
- Authors
Al Balawi, Ramah; Hu, Yuheng; Qiu, Liangfei
- Abstract
The rise of social media platforms has created new opportunities for successful customer relationship management (CRM) activities. Compared with traditional CRM, social media–based CRM enables brands to easily and directly communicate with their customers, which can strengthen customer relationships. The public nature of social media offers an innovative way for brands to engage and manage their customer relationships, increasing brand awareness and enabling easy access to prospective customers. However, public customer engagement on social media does not come without risk. For example, negative word of mouth on social media stemming from poor customer engagement or a brand response can disseminate and reach a large audience. Despite the popularity of social media platforms as customer relationship channels, it is still unclear how a brand crisis can change a brand's social CRM efforts. Leveraging a natural experiment setting, we investigate the impact of the United Airlines crisis on three dimensions of social CRM efforts: informativeness, timeliness, and attentiveness. Contrary to traditional CRM efforts and recommendations, we find that the brand crisis increases informativeness efforts but reduces timeliness and attentiveness efforts. In this study, we investigate the effect of a brand crisis on the customer relationship management (CRM) efforts of brands on social media. Despite the opportunities social media offers to brands to connect and engage with customers, it is still unclear how a brand crisis can change a brand's social CRM efforts. Social media platforms can amplify the negative consequences of a brand crisis. However, the unique and public nature of social media platforms can offer new means for brands to handle a brand crisis and publicly manage their customer relationships. Compared with traditional CRM, social media enables brands to communicate with their customers publicly, which can strengthen their relationships with customers and maintain higher levels of customer engagement. Leveraging a natural experiment setting, we investigate the impact of the United Airlines crisis on three dimensions of social CRM efforts: informativeness, timeliness, and attentiveness. Contrary to traditional CRM efforts and recommendations, we find that the brand crisis increases informativeness efforts but reduces timeliness and attentiveness efforts. History: Yong Tan, Senior Editor; Beibei Li, Associate Editor. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.1159.
- Subjects
UNITED Airlines Inc.; CUSTOMER relationship management; SOCIAL media; LOW-income consumers; AIRLINE industry; CUSTOMER relations; BRAND name products
- Publication
Information Systems Research, 2023, Vol 34, Issue 2, p442
- ISSN
1047-7047
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1287/isre.2022.1159