Consumer Responses to Conflict-Management Strategies on Non-Profit Social Media Fan Pages

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated that consumer-to-consumer (C2C) conflicts, here defined as uncivil social interactions between consumers, can have a negative impact on consumers’ engagement in social media fan pages (SMFPs). Little is known, however, about how best to manage such conflicts, and this is particularly true in the non-profit context. This paper follows a mixed-method approach in order to address this research gap. Study 1 uses a netnography of a non-profit organization (NPO) to examine how it manages C2C conflicts on its SMFP. Five different conflict-management strategies are identified: non-engaging, censoring, bolstering, educating, and mobilizing. These findings inform Study 2, an online experiment to test how different strategies affect consumers’ attitudes towards the conflict-management approach itself and towards the NPO's social responsibility. Study 2 also accounts for the moderating effect of the conflict content, differentiating between whether a conflict relates to a consumer's self-benefit or the benefit to others. Our results offer insights for practitioners into preferable content management strategies when consumers engage in different types of conflict on social media platforms.