When Consumers Defend for Your Brand Online

Abstract

The Internet has facilitated discussion on different products and services and allowed consumers to support their favourite companies and brands with positive comments, defend their favourites in response to critics, or even proactively attack the competitors of their favourite companies/brands (Colliander and Wien 2013). Comments from different users toward the same brand may lead to online Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) conflicts (Dineva et al. 2017), especially when the languages in online communications tend to be more toxic than in the real world (Au et al. 2021). Known as “Consumers’ brand defending,” similar behaviours are commonly seen online (Colliander and Wien 2013), but their formation and impact are not adequately explored. Considering the potential role of consumers in shaping the company/brand images(Lin and Wang 2015) and the need to explore the dark side of brand attachment (Japutra et al. 2014), we need a better understanding on these behaviours so that we can formulate holistic brand management strategies. The leading question of our project would be, “What are the enablers, style, and impacts of consumers’ online brand defending behaviours?”. Starting with a case study, we identified some potential theoretical implications. Based on some recommended frameworks for mixed-method research (e.g., Gable 1994), the case study will be followed by quantitative studies and interviews for developing meta-inferences.