Påverkas du av andras klagomål? En kvantitativ studie om missnöjesspridning i sociala medier

Sammanfattning: During the recent years, daily communication between companies and their customers has increasingly moved from traditional customer service channels to social media. This has resulted in customer complaints being voiced on company Facebook pages, Instagram posts and tweets. Most companies have well researched strategies for handling customer complaints in traditional channels. However, there is a gap in the research area of customer complaints voiced in social media and companies are screaming for guidance. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to give an overview of how customer complaints in social media can affect other consumers and how companies could handle this type of complaints. The primary objective is to find out if and how customer complaints in social media affect how consumers, who are exposed to the complaint, view the company that the complaint concerns. To find out how companies best should handle complaints in social media, three underlying objectives were formed. These objectives aim to show how the effect of the complaint might vary depending on what the customer complains about, the type of response the company gives to the complaint, as well as combining these two aspects - type of response with type of complaint. Consequently, the thesis consists of 4 studies that are based on one digital survey taken by 911 respondents. The survey exposed the respondents to scenarios of different types of complaints with different types of responses in a 3x3 matrix design. The respondents' attitude towards the researched brand, Hennes & Mauritz (hereafter H&M), was measured before and after the scenario to see if any change had occurred. The results show that consumer attitudes are affected negatively by being exposed to a complaint in social media. More specifically, a negative effect is found on customers' satisfaction, buying intention, loyalty and perceived risk with H&M. However, there is no evidence of different types of responses being more effective than others for different types of complaints. Thereby we conclude that customer complaints in social media do spread negative attitudes among other consumers, and companies should therefore try to minimize the occurrence of customer complaints voiced in their social media channels.