Social Media Word-of-Mouth in Crisis and Non-Crisis Context: Examining the Halo Effect of Corporate Reputation

Firms usually expect to benefit from social media technology through seeking social media positive word-of-mouth exposure. However, it turns out that firms suffers more from negative crisis communication among consumers on social media when corporate crises happen. This paper compares consumers’ decision progress of positive word-of-mouth and secondary crisis communication in non-crisis and crisis contexts and aims to give an insight into social media word-of-mouth management. Scenarios were used to design crisis and non-crisis contexts and the results showed that in non-crisis contexts, affective reputation contributes more to positive word-of-mouth than cognitive reputation. Meanwhile in crisis contexts, high cognitive reputation brings more secondary crisis communication than affective reputation. Furthermore, when consumers have high social outcome expectations towards social media use, they are less likely to engage in positive word-of-mouth in non-crisis context and are more likely to engage in secondary crisis communication in crisis contexts.