Consumer brand-cyberbullying in online brand communities: A conceptual and empirical extension

Companies like Manchester United and Nike host some of the largest online communities on social media to promote their brands. Increasingly, these communities experience incidents of cyberbullying amongst their members. Drawing on research from information studies, psychology, and marketing, we repo...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Breitsohl, Jan, Jiménez Torres, Nadia Huitzilin, Roschk, Holger, Megicks, P.R., Aagerup, U.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2025
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Burgos (UBU)
Repositorio:Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Burgos (RIUBU)
OAI Identifier:oai:riubu.ubu.es:10259/11055
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10259/11055
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Aggression
Consumer-toconsumer interactions
Cyberbullying
Online communities
Social media
Ciberacoso
Consumidores
Consumers
Descripción
Sumario:Companies like Manchester United and Nike host some of the largest online communities on social media to promote their brands. Increasingly, these communities experience incidents of cyberbullying amongst their members. Drawing on research from information studies, psychology, and marketing, we report on observations of eight online brand communities to reveal four conceptual elements – Aggression, Interpersonality, Reinforcing Platform Architecture, and Identity Focus – of consumer brand-cyberbullying (Study 1). Subsequently, we use survey data to show that a key explanation for why consumers who identify with brands bully others lies in their materialistic aspirations, and the extent of this depends on their online community participation, prior cyber-bullying experiences, and brand involvement (Study 2). Our findings provide insights for companies in shaping their policies and interventions to address this problematic behavior of online consumers.