The effect of online protests and firm responses on shareholder and consumer evaluation

Tijs van den Broek, David Langley, Tobias Hornig

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Protests that target firms’ socially irresponsible behavior are increasingly organized via digital media. This study uses two methods to investigate the effects that online protests and mitigating firm responses have on shareholders’ and consumers’ evaluation. The first method is a financial analysis that includes an event study which measures the effect of online protests on the target firm’s share price, as well as an investigation of the boundary effects of protest characteristics. The second method is an online experiment that assesses the effect of an online protest campaign on consumers’ perception and purchase intention, as well as any mitigating effects that a firm’s response may have. Contrary to recent studies suggesting that participation in online protests is only token support without any substantive effects, our results show that online protests do hurt. Firms can expect to suffer financial, reputational, and sales damage when an online protest campaign mobilizes consumers successfully. We also show that online protests are more likely to take firms by surprise than offline protests. Firms can exacerbate or reduce the damage by their response. We find that although firms may repair the damage to consumers’ purchase intentions, the negative effects on a brand’s image are harder to rectify. The results have valuable implications for protest organizers and managers faced with the task of responding
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)279-294
Number of pages16
JournalJournal of Business Ethics
Volume146
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2017

Funding

We would like to express our thanks for the assistance we received during the data collection from Anita Lieverdink and Gijs Hendrix, and thank Michel Ehrenhard for his useful feedback. Funding was provied by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. Funding Funding was provied by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.

FundersFunder number
Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs
Ministry of Economic Affairs

    Keywords

    • Consumer activism
    • Corporate social responsibility
    • Financial impact
    • Reputation
    • Response strategies
    • Stakeholder management

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'The effect of online protests and firm responses on shareholder and consumer evaluation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this