A stage to engage: Social media use and corporate reputation
Introduction
Social media have changed the way people interact with each other and with companies (Hanna et al., 2011, Kietzmann et al., 2011). The rise of Web 2.0 has enabled consumers to actively act and react on what companies are doing, without being dependent on third parties for media-access – anyone with a smartphone can potentially reach a worldwide audience (Cormode and Krishnamurthy, 2008, O' Reilly, 2007). Moreover, consumers have shifted their information seeking behavior with regard to products and services from offline sources to electronic word-of-mouth sources (eWOM), like social networking and review sites (Gruen, Osmonbekov, & Czaplewski, 2006). While traditional commercial information, like advertisements and promotion, is becoming decreasingly effective (Sethuraman, Tellis, & Briesch, 2011), consumers tend to increasingly rely on peer consumer opinions available online (Gligorijevic & Luck, 2012, pp. 25–40; Park, Lee, & Han, 2007). A global survey among 28,000 internet respondents showed that only about 46% of participants reported trusting traditional advertising, whereas 92% reported trusting word-of-mouth from friends and family and 70% reported trusting online consumer reviews (Nielsen, 2012). Notably, social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, provide a substantive part of the available online word-of-mouth. Furthermore, social media sites are an important factor in search results. In a study of Xiang and Gretzel (2010) travel related search results in Google consisted of 11% referrals to social media sites. In a similar study 27% hotel related search results referred to social media sites (Walden, Carlsson, & Papageorgiou, 2011).
As a result of these developments, companies have changed their communication approach. Companies increasingly try to get consumers engaged in online discussions by including social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in their communication strategy: 87% of the Fortune Global 100's companies are active on at least one social media platform, mainly Twitter (82%) and Facebook (74%) (Burson-Marsteller, 2012).
The most prevalent motives for companies to use social media are enhancing trustworthiness, brand attitude, and customer commitment (Van Noort and Willemsen, 2011, Weinberg and Pehlivan, 2011). Together, the activities aiming at achieving these goals are often referred to as online reputation management, which can be defined as “the process of positioning, monitoring, measuring, talking, and listening as the organization engages in a transparent and ethical dialogue with its various on-line stakeholders” (Jones, Temperley, & Lima, 2009, p. 934). Online reputation management involves interacting with people online, creating shareable content, monitoring what stakeholders are saying, keeping track of their dialogue, addressing negative content found online, and following up on ideas that are shared through social media.
A crucial question, however, that has hitherto not been studied extensively, is whether such social media activities are in fact beneficial for a company's corporate reputation. In the present study, we investigate whether and when consumers' engagement in a company's social media activities is positively related to perceived corporate reputation.
Section snippets
Corporate reputation
One of the main reasons for companies to carry out the kind of online activities described above is the assumption that they are beneficial for their (corporate) reputation. Corporate reputation has been defined as “a collective representation of a firm's past behaviour and outcomes that depicts the firm's ability to render valued results to multiple stakeholders” (Fombrun, Gardberg, & Sever, 2000, p. 243). According to Fombrun, et al. (2000), reputation is an attitudinal construct that
The case company
Airlines currently make up the most “socially devoted” industry, and several airlines are among the most active companies in using social media (Socialbakers, 2013). Therefore, airlines constitute an ideal setting for studying the relation between engagement in a company's social media activities and corporate reputation. For the present study we chose KLM Royal Dutch Airlines as a case company, because it is very active on a range of online platforms, has enough online followers, and is
Participants
We conducted a survey among 3531 participants (42% female) consisting of both customers and non-customers, all residing in The Netherlands. The age distribution of our sample was <25 years: 9%, 25–35: 14%, 36–45: 20%, 46–55: 24% and >55: 33%. To be classified as “customer” in this study, a participant must have used the services (for private or business use) of KLM in the two years before the start of the study. With this definition, 1912 participants (54% of N) were classified as “customer”.
Results
Table 1 gives an overview of the descriptive statistics and Spearman's rank correlations between the main variables in this study, the moderator variable “customer” (yes or no), and participants' gender and age. Gender and age did not have any direct association with perception of the company's reputation. However, there was a negative correlation between age and intensity of social media use (ρ = −.34) and between age and engagement in social media activities (ρ = −.20): older participants are
Conclusion and discussion
The proliferation of social media use among companies has raised questions about the effects of their social media efforts, particularly with regard to the effects on corporate reputation. Our study aimed to shed light on the question whether and to which extent a company's social media activities are related to perceptions of corporate reputation among customers and non-customers. The results of a large-scale survey provide both theoretical and practical insights. We find that engagement in
Corné Dijkmans is Senior Lecturer Digital Marketing & New Media at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands, and is currently taking his PhD as an external researcher at the department of Communication Science at VU University Amsterdam. His research at VU Amsterdam is focused on the effects of the use of social media by companies on consumers, in particular in the travel- and tourism industry. Current topics are social media engagement, online reputation management and
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Corné Dijkmans is Senior Lecturer Digital Marketing & New Media at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands, and is currently taking his PhD as an external researcher at the department of Communication Science at VU University Amsterdam. His research at VU Amsterdam is focused on the effects of the use of social media by companies on consumers, in particular in the travel- and tourism industry. Current topics are social media engagement, online reputation management and online brand exposure. He is also participating in the EU Lifelong Learning Program with regard to lecturer trainings to improve the attractiveness and quality of management education by the use of management simulation tools.
Peter Kerkhof currently holds the chair in social media at the department of Communication Science, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He also holds a chair in Customer Media at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research at the University of Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD in social psychology in 1997. His recent research interests focus on the uses of social media by consumers and companies, and on the conversations that they engage in on social media.
Camiel Beukeboom is an assistant professor at the Department of Communication Science at VU University Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD in Social Psychology in 2003 at the same University. Currently he teaches Interpersonal Communication with a special focus on mediated communication. His research is for a large part also related to this topic. He conducts research on the use of media in interpersonal contact; on the use of Social Network sites like Facebook and Twitter, and on language use on Twitter and consumer fora. He also studies the consequences of the increasing intensity of mobile phone use, and the ways in which organizations can successfully intervene in social media (webcare).