Consumers frequently express themselves by posting about products on social media. Because consumers can use physical products to signal their identities, posting about products on social media may be a way for consumers to virtually signal identity. The authors propose that there are conditions in which this action can paradoxically reduce a consumer’s subsequent purchase intentions. Five experiments demonstrate that posting products on social media that are framed as being identity-relevant can reduce a consumer’s subsequent purchase intentions for the same and similar products, as this action allows consumers to virtually signal their identity, fulfilling identity-signaling needs. Fortunately for retailers, the authors suggest theoretically and managerially relevant moderators that attenuate this negative effect on intent to purchase. These findings have important implications for how firms can conduct social media marketing to minimize negative purchase outcomes.

AbstractSocial media allows people to freely interact with others and offers multiple ways for marketers to reach and engage with consumers. Considering the numerous ways social media affects individuals and businesses alike, in this article, the authors focus on where they believe the future of social media lies when considering marketing-related topics and issues. Drawing on academic research, discussions with industry leaders, and popular discourse, the authors identify nine themes, organized by predicted imminence (i.e., the immediate, near, and far futures), that they believe will meaningfully shape the future of social media through three lenses: consumer, industry, and public policy. Within each theme, the authors describe the digital landscape, present and discuss their predictions, and identify relevant future research directions for academics and practitioners.

To date, the literature offers multiple suggestions for how to recover from service failures, albeit without explicitly addressing customers’ negative, high-arousal states evoked by the failure. The few studies that do address ways to improve negative emotions after failures focus on face-to-face interactions only. Because many customers today prefer to complain on social media, firms must learn how to effectively de-escalate negative, high-arousal emotions through text-based exchanges to achieve successful service recoveries. With three field studies using natural language processing tools and three preregistered controlled experiments, the current research identifies ways to mitigate negative arousal in text-based social media complaining, specifically, active listening and empathy. In detail, increasing active listening and empathy in the firm response evokes gratitude among customers in high-arousal states, even if the actual failure is not (yet) recovered. These findings provide a new theoretical perspective on the role of customer arousal in service failures and recoveries as well as managerially relevant implications for dealing with public social media complaints.

Organizations lose billions of dollars due to inadequate customer service. To improve service, and enhance customer satisfaction, frontline employees’ (FLEs) use of relational communication may be key. During online customer service chats, FLEs provide key information and offer solutions, but they also can build customer relationships through conversations. In this article, we establish how relational perceptions get evoked in conversations and what influences they have for the outcomes of customer service interactions. Accordingly, we present an empirical field study that illustrates how FLEs influence customer satisfaction by mirroring or complementing four key themes, in line with relational communication theory: intimate communication, task orientation, assertiveness, and composure. Our results indicate that FLEs should mimic customers’ use of intimate communication and task orientation, complement their assertiveness, and exhibit high levels of composure. Moreover, FLEs should emphasize their task orientation at the conversation's outset, gradually incorporate more intimate communication as it progresses, and adopt assertiveness late in the service chat. These insights, corroborated by four experimental studies, underscore the significance of FLEs’ relational communication. Our findings highlight the value of training FLEs to tailor their word choices adeptly, and leverage the potential benefits of text-monitoring tools, which can help FLEs increase relational perceptions and satisfaction among their customers.