Would you mind your language, please? : Consumer Incivility on Social Media Platforms

Abstract

Consumer incivility on social media platforms has recently gained the attention of academic researchers. However, few studies have presented the role that consumer incivility plays in forming social media perspectives (e.g. experiencing uncivil comments or rude replies on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). Using the stimulus-organism-response theory, this study investigated the impacts of consumer incivility on social media brand representatives’ efforts to deal with it, social media brand community participation and social media brand trust. The study also investigated the influence of social media brand representatives’ efforts to deal with consumer incivility on social media brand community participation and examined the relationships of these two factors with social media brand trust. Two hundred and forty social media consumers who had witnessed the effect of consumer incivility on social media community platforms completed the study questionnaires. SPSS 23 and SmartPLS-SEM (v. 3.3.7) were used to analyse the data obtained and to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that consumer incivility was significantly inversely associated with the causal constructs. The present study provided novel insights for high-tech social media industries, including digital marketers and community developers.