The aim of this section is to explore the objectives of CCB on Facebook. By examining consumers’ objectives, it was hoped to understand the characteristics of different ways of complaining online. Following the previous sections, this section was also divided into two subsections in order to focus on perceived objectives of posts on public pages and profiles separately.
8.5.1. Perceived Objectives of CCB on Public Pages/Groups
Since, consumers can use public pages to communicate with a company and/or other consumers, these pages were used for a variety of objectives. Observations identified eight objectives that consumers expressed on their posts on public pages/groups. Table 8.7 and Table 8.8 show the frequencies of these objectives within the official and user-created pages.
Table 8. 7- Frequencies of the Perceived Objectives of CCB on Official Pages
Table 8. 8- Frequencies of the Perceived Objectives of CCB on User-Created Pages
According to Table 8.7 and 8.8, consumers used both official and user-created pages mainly to vent. This objective has the highest frequency in all types of pages/groups. It suggests that
Perceived Objectives
Official brand pages
Official product
pages TOTAL
Advising the company 28 30 58
Comparisons 13 15 28 Criticism 62 16 78 Entertainment 6 0 6 Redress seeking 49 30 79 Seeking advice/suggestions 12 22 34 Venting 88 45 133 Warning others 32 5 37
Perceived Objectives Anti-brand pages
Issue specific pages Unofficial brand pages Unofficial product pages TOTAL
Advising the company 0 0 9 3 12
Comparisons 4 1 9 0 14 Criticism 13 4 16 5 38 Entertainment 6 12 9 4 31 Redress seeking 0 2 11 3 16 Seeking advice/suggestions 1 0 8 5 14 Venting 18 21 41 7 87 Warning others 12 1 11 2 26
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consumers’ use of Facebook might have been mainly aimed at venting negative feelings (e.g. anger, frustration, annoyance) and to feel better about the situation. Since this does not require a particular audience, using both official and user-created pages can help consumers to achieve it. This objective is followed by redress seeking on the official pages and criticism on the user-created pages. Posts with redress seeking specifically target the company. However, some consumers mistook the unofficial pages for the official ones, and used these pages to seek redress (see Section 8.2.1.1). Criticism, on the other hand, might target different audiences depending on the objectives for complaining. Consumers who wanted to criticise the company in order to evaluate or give their opinions about it, prefer to use official pages as they want to be heard directly by the company. On the other hand, consumers who want to communicate with others so as to spread information can use both official and user-created pages. It should also be noted that in the view of the researcher, consumers who criticise might have additional objectives, such as expecting a redress without openly asking for it, or venting feelings without showing emotion.
The rest of the perceived objectives (i.e. ‘advising the company’, ‘comparisons with other companies’, ‘entertainment’, ‘seeking advice/suggestions’ and ‘warning others’) have similar frequencies in official and user-created pages with some minor exceptions. When consumers
advise the company, they provide feedback. These are usually loyal consumers who want the
company to improve:
“i love your clothing, i love your store and the new eco-friendly design. but using your web site to pay my bill is another story. the problems: getting a confirmation number doesn't mean your payment has gone through so you probably really need to pay a couple days in advance so you know for sure and don't get a late charge. you must also change the "billing date" to have the process even start, heads up on that.” (Gap)
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Comparing the company with other companies is another objective of CCB on Facebook with
a relatively lower frequency especially in the user-created pages. Since Facebook allows users to talk and discuss topics of choice without limitations, consumers can openly talk about other companies even in the official pages:
“Shame on you, Gap! The shipping cost to Romania is 91 EURO, about 120 USD, it's unbelievable! Check out the Victoria's Secret, Tommy Hilfiger, Shopbop for shipping cost and do something about it! Or if you can't do anything, remove the international shipping option.”
(Gap)
This consumer promoted competitors, pointing out that other companies were cheaper for the same service. It was also common to list the characteristics of similar products from different companies in order to compare them with each other.
The objective with the lowest frequency in the official pages was entertainment, and had a relatively higher frequency in user-created pages. These consumers preferred to voice their complaints with humour, or to made fun of the company.
Another objective was seeking advice/suggestions. This includes questions asked directly to the company as well as to others:
“I can't remove the travel insurance while booking a flight and car but I have my own travel insurance. There is no drop down menu to skip the insurance. How come? Or where have you hidden it?” (Ryanair)
Seeking advice/suggestions has relatively low frequency in both official and user-created pages. However, there is a possibility that some other consumers complained with this objective without openly asking questions.
Finally, warning other consumers is another objective with similar frequency in official and user-created pages. Consumers who had problems wanted to warn others of similar situations
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in order to help or protect them. This sort of information usually was passed through recommending, warning, instructing or educating others10.
8.5.2. Perceived Objectives of CCB on Profile Pages
Observations revealed that consumers had similar objectives when they complain on public and profile pages. Among the eight objectives that were identified on public pages/groups, six of them- ‘comparisons’, ‘criticism’, ‘entertainment’, ‘seeking advice/suggestions’, ‘venting’ and ‘warning others’- were observed on the profiles. Table 8.9 shows the frequencies of these objectives.
Table 8. 9- Frequencies of the Perceived Objectives of CCB on Profile Pages
Like public pages, venting has the highest frequency on profiles and it is followed by criticism. Therefore, overall venting as an objective for complaining has the highest frequency on Facebook. Both public pages and profiles offer consumers an opportunity to vent negative emotions through sharing their feelings with others. Some consumers might consider this as a personal matter and prefer to use their profiles, while others might feel even better when they know other people will learn about their problems and therefore share them on the public pages/groups. It was easy to recognise the frustration and stress on some of these posts through the choice of words:
“Spss, you a joke!! Catastrophe of interface design! Flashback of medieval ages!!!”
10 Permission to use posts with some of the objectives could not been obtained from the post owners and are
therefore not included.
Perceived Objectives Profile Pages
Comparisons 12 Criticism 25 Entertainment 16 Seeking advice/suggestions 9 Venting 44 Warning others 8
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Criticism was the second common objective on profile pages. Unlike public pages, when
consumers criticise companies on their profiles, they aimed to share opinions and to discuss with their Facebook friends. In this way, consumers had conversations about the companies with their friends.
The objective of entertainment had higher frequency on profiles, compared with public pages. It is possible that consumers wanted to be more serious when they complain on the public pages because they were communicating with the companies and/or strangers. Therefore, they might have believed that a serious approach would be more helpful in order to obtain results. However, on profiles, since they communicated with Facebook friends, they might have wanted to create something positive out of their negative experiences.
Posts with comparisons, seeking advice/suggestions and warning others were the other objectives. These posts tended to include more details and less vivid words:
“After their latest cheating, I've decided to leave Turkcell. Which one should go for; Avea or
Vodafone?”
Lastly, no post with redress seeking intentions was identified on the profiles. Since profiles do not provide communication opportunities with companies, consumers might not have considered them as a method for redress. However, some consumers still posted information about their redress seeking activities, while they were trying to obtain redress through other channels. This was a case of consumers being engaged with complaining activities outside of Facebook, but using Facebook to communicate with friends simultaneously:
“Orbitz and I have a disagreement about how airplanes should work. I think you should get what I paid for, they think they should change things without notifying me, take my money and waste hours of my time. Let's see if I can convince them I'm right.”
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