Abstract/Summary

The aim of the study is to explore the consumer-company relationship after a company experiences negative publicity online in order to provide recommendations to companies as to the direction they should take post negative publicity. Therefore, via two guiding theories, moral emotions (Haidt, 2003) and consumer-company identification (Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003), this thesis examines consumers’ emotions and cognitions after a negative event emerges and after the corporate response. This thesis adopts a qualitative approach and particularly a netnographic study is employed. This thesis specifically examines the case of Chick-fil-A that caused controversies online due to its beliefs and identity (BBC, 2019). The research examines comments that were posted in newspaper articles on Facebook regarding the protests that took place in Reading against the company due to the aforementioned reasons. A total of 2,973 comments were analysed. The findings of the study conceptualise online negative publicity. The findings further reveal that when a negative event emerges, consumers process the event both emotionally and cognitively. Moreover, consumers’ positive or negative emotions, cognitions and subsequent reactions towards negative publicity are a result of consumers wanting to preserve and protect both their social and moral identities as they are both salient in such instances. Additionally, this thesis uncovers that a consumer-company relationship in cases of negative publicity is very fragile and even those who identify with the organisation can disidentify with it when the response strategy is weak. This thesis develops two theories for the relationship marketing literature, namely, emotional consumer-company identification/disidentification. These theories better help to understand the nature of the consumer-company relationship especially in cases of negative publicity. Moreover, this thesis presents a robust understanding of the consumer-company relationship post negative publicity considering both consumers’ emotions and cognitions. Finally, this thesis provides strategies as to how companies can better deal with online negative publicity.