Consumer brand-cyberbullying in online brand communities: A conceptual and empirical extension
研究了在线品牌社区中消费者对品牌的网络欺凌行为，通过观察八个社区识别出四个核心要素，并基于调查数据发现物质主义倾向是驱动因素，其影响受社区参与、先前欺凌经历和品牌涉入度调节。
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.