Handling Consumer Messages on Social Networking Sites: Customer Service or Privacy Infringement?
研究企业主动干预社交网站上的消费者信息时，如何引发隐私侵犯感并影响客户满意度，发现只有反应式干预能提升满意度，而主动干预的效果取决于感知有用性与隐私担忧的权衡。
Firms increasingly use social network sites to reach out to customers and proactively intervene with observed consumer messages. Despite intentions to enhance customer satisfaction by extending customer service, sometimes these interventions are received negatively by consumers. We draw on privacy regulation theory to theorize how proactive customer service interventions with consumer messages on social network sites may evoke feelings of privacy infringement. Subsequently we use privacy calculus theory to propose how these perceptions of privacy infringement, together with the perceived usefulness of the intervention, in turn drive customer satisfaction. In two experiments, we find that feelings of privacy infringement associated with proactive interventions may explain why only reactive interventions enhance customer satisfaction. Moreover, we find that customer satisfaction can be modeled through the calculus of the perceived usefulness and feelings of privacy infringement associated with an intervention. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the impact of privacy concerns on consumer behavior in the context of firm–consumer interactions on social network sites, extend the applicability of privacy calculus theory, and contribute to complaint and compliment management literature. To practitioners, our findings demonstrate that feelings of privacy are an element to consider when handling consumer messages on social media, but also that privacy concerns may be overcome if an intervention is perceived as useful enough.