Towards a typology of negative engagement behavior in social media

Extant literature on consumer engagement has focused on positive manifestations of the construct, rather than on its negative dimension. Yet, many brand interactions are negative in nature. The purpose of this conceptual study is to develop a typology of negative engagement behavior in social media by using the multi-grounded theory (MGT) approach on a sample of 12,429 tweets extracted from Twitter. The analysis shows that negative engagement behavior with a brand or service provider as the object focus or target can be categorized according to (a) the manifestation of the negative engagement and (b) the emotional intensity of the negative engagement. Four categories of negative engagement behavior (NEB) were identified. These include negative review writing, justice-seeking complaining, retaliation acts, and firestorming. The study concludes that an understanding of the different categories of negative engagement in social media is essential if service providers are to effectively address and respond to different forms of consumer sentiment.

现有的关于用户参与的文献往往关注其概念的积极层面，而不是 它的消极维度。然而许多品牌的互动在本质上是消极的。本研究 以12429条推文为样本，运用多重扎根理论方法(MGT)，研究社交 媒体中的负面参与行为类型。分析表明，以品牌或服务供应商为 关注对象的负面参与行为可分为(a) 负面参与的表现形式; (b)负面 参与的情绪强度。负面参与行为被确认为四类, 包含‘写负面评 论’、‘为寻求公正而引发的抱怨行为’、‘报复行为’和‘激烈抨击’。 本研究的结论是，如果服务供应商想要有效地处理和回应不同形 式的消费者情绪，了解社交媒体中不同类别的负面参与是必不可 少的。