The willingness of consumers to take part in consumer resistance in times of Web 2.0

MA-Thesis / Master von Martin König

Introduction:

The central topic of this master’s thesis is the growing power of consumers along with the associated likelihood of their resistance. Though in the past the manufacture controlled market activity, a shifting towards the consumer can be detected nowadays. Due to ongoing developments in the online world, it can be assumed that consumers will become even more powerful in the future. In other words, consumers are incrementally gaining importance so that through resistance they will become strong enough in influencing business decisions. Thus, in the long run the possibility of achieving a balance between consumers and producers is given. In this sense, the Internet is an especially important tool for increasing the power of people. While consumers have the possibility of accessing an unlimited amount of information, they are also able to be connected on a global level which makes the exchange of information easier. According to an estimation by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) there were 1.542 billion Internet users worldwide in 2008 which represents approximately a quarter of the world’s population. Taking into consideration that the amount of users has more than doubled within 5 years - compared to 721 million users in 2003, it can be assumed that the number of people with access to the Internet will also continue to grow in the future. Moreover, new applications which have arisen in the wake of Web 2.0 especially support the development towards more powerful consumers. Thanks to the permanently growing popularity of social media incorporating social networks such as Twitter, the trade of information and data between like-minded people is much easier and quicker. Theoretically, everybody can be informed about business practices of a certain company anywhere in the world. Consequently, global companies no longer have the possibility to hide any kind of information so the whole world becomes more transparent.

Looking at consumption behaviour in postmodern times it can be realized that people are starting to consume more consciously. Out of the huge amount of highly diversified goods available consumers can choose those commodities which are most suitable for representing their identity. This means that they decide in reference to their personal selection criteria which brands they will consume. Hence, in order to better evaluate goods, information is sought before consumption. Especially anti-brand sites, also known as corporate hate sites - web pages, in which the practices of a company and the quality of its brand are critically examined, yield a vast amount of information. Today, it can be seen that more and more consumers create their own web sites with the aim of expressing their opinions and collecting each kind of critical information about a brand in order to exchange their experiences of consumption with each other. Has there been only one corporate hate site in 1995, nine years later already more than 10,500 pages are circulating on the Internet. That is why, according to a survey of the mi2g Intelligence Unit, corporate hate sites are the biggest digital risk problem nowadays among CEOs of major global brands. Due to the power of ‘word-of-mouth’ and the fact that especially negative news is gaining consumers’ attention, companies have to be completely aware of their behaviour. Thus, it is obvious what influence those pages might have on a company’s performance. Consequently, the problem in the main focus is how dangerous those pages truly are and how companies have to deal with them. As already indicated above, it is the consumer who can accomplish his personal interests in business processes through rejecting certain unwanted company practices. Additionally, it is also him who can force multinational enterprises to act in a positive, responsible way. In the end, thanks to these new technologies it is this transparency which permanently keeps up the threat of bad publicity. In order to establish a better image and to avoid becoming the target of such anti-brand sites, companies even start to take environmental and social issues into consideration. Thus, corporate sustainability is one of the factors determining corporate practices.

Out of this current situation the overall aim of this thesis is to investigate if there is any relation between the ongoing spread of the Internet and the growing resistance among consumers. Thus, the research question is: ‘Does the Internet have a significant impact on consumers’ willingness to participate in consumer resistance?’ During this investigation the emphasis will be put on two different aspects: Why are consumers increasingly critical and why are they more likely to resist? This in turn requires an examination of what opportunities the Internet provides and how these tight anti-brand communities operate.

At the end of this research it shall be verified whether the following assumptions are right or not:

The internet is a tool which helps to enhance consumer power so that the domination of the market can consequently be broken down.

Members of anti-brand communities are dissatisfied consumers who can be regained when required improvements are executed.

Brands which are consistently highly ranked in ‘Most powerful brand lists’ and which have a high brand value are more likely to be targeted by anti-brand sites.

The higher the interactivity in brand communities is, the stronger the member’s feeling of belonging becomes so that the probability of consumers’ engagement rises.

Understanding the underlying motivations for anti-brand sites is a chance for corporations to better perform in the future.

The theory of postmodernism will help to explain how the consumer culture has generally changed. Therefore, it has to be investigated what new conditions accordingly underlie present times. Those new conditions are necessary to understand why an eventual rising resistance among consumers occurs. Hence, while postmodernism can be understood as a blessing for consumers, it can be seen as a curse at the same time. After giving a short overview of motives and different forms of resistance, the focus should be especially placed on anti-brand sites; one way for consumers to express resistance. The second part of this research picks up on this point. In this sense, it will be first explained what new opportunities exist thanks to the Internet. In the second step, a description of what technologies and applications are particularly used will be explored. After this brief introduction a deeper look will be taken at the theory of tribes and online brand communities. Here, the intention is to show how these tight communities work and how it is possible that people with similar interests start to unite even though the whole interaction remains anonymous and virtual. Finally, it shall become clear what the underlying incentives for the creation of anti-brand sites are, how people there are organized and why these sites pose such a threat to corporations.

This theoretical part is followed by empirical studies. In order to check if the assumptions are applicable in reality, an investigation including case studies and monitoring will be carried out for examining what trends can be deducted from anti-brand sites of some global corporations. The aim of this investigation is also to see how those pages are designed, what their content is and who the operators of these pages are. In order to get deeper inside the way of thinking of consumers a survey among potential buyers will be conducted. After getting some general information about their online habits, the intention is also to find out what makes them to resist and what their attitudes towards anti-brand sites are. All the findings of these empirical studies will finally serve to validate the hypothesis. Thus, at the end of the master’s thesis the question of how influential the Internet is on consumers’ likelihood of resistance shall be answered. Depending on the final conclusion, it will be possible to give a preview of how corporations have to deal with anti-brand sites in future.

Table of Contents:

Text Sample:

Chapter 3.1., Deeper insights into the term ‘Internet’:

Even though many people worldwide are nowadays familiar with the Internet, the number of those users who know about its history is quite low. A similar observation can be made by asking people what the Internet is. In order to provide a deeper insight into the online world, some information about the Internet’s historical development as well as its characteristics shall be given.

3.1.1, How everything began - from a military project to the WWW:

The birth of the Internet dates back to the year 1969. In order to create a connection between computers from scientific and the military fields at different locations, the ARPAnet was set up on behalf of the American Ministry of Defence. This network which was developed on the basis of a project at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) represents the first prototype of the Internet. Within this first existing connection of multiple computers, a central host was linked with other network terminals which were arranged in a star shape. Prerequisites for the birth of the Internet were accordingly the founding of faculties of computer science at leading American universities which were later on linked to the network, as well as the research in the area of a time-sharing concept (different terminals using one mainframe). Despite all the new technical opportunities which emerged, the system was still very limited and susceptible. That is why solutions were sought in order to make it possible to connect the different systems to each other. In addition to the development of an Interface Message Processor (IMP) which served as a translator so that data could be transferred with the help of a uniform system, regardless of the respective system at a location, the introduction of a new transfer protocol, the precursor of the present Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), contributed to a more reliable sending and receiving of data. Within this new protocol, the idea of packet switching was applied. Due to the fact that the ARPAnet could be only accessed by universities which were taking part in military researching, other scientific networks emerged in time. Also in Europe, the first networks of this kind were launched in 1982. Making the TCP/IP become the standardized transfer protocol for all those networks which were connected to the ARPAnet, a further step towards a uniform basis was made in the same year. However, in 1990 access to the Internet was still reserved for military and scientific persons. Even though this ban was revoked one year later, so that the opportunity was given to use the Internet for commercial interests as well, a profound knowledge in regulating command lines was still needed. At the same time, programs had gradually prevailed which used a graphical user interface (GUI) in order to operate on the Internet. Taking for example the physics laboratory Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) in Switzerland a program called World Wide Web (WWW) was developed in 1989 out of the idea to establish a kind of intranet with a graphical user interface. This resulting system, through which it was possible to organize information on a distributed network, was based on hypertext. In this sense, in order to convert pictures, texts as well as other sources into hypertext pages, the hypertext mark-up language (HTML) was developed. Reading documents over the Web still requires this language today. In turn, to identify this data perfectly so that it can be found within a common space, the so-called ‘Web’, a universal resource locator (URL) is used. The decisive advantage of this program was its public accessibility. That is why the possibility of using the Web for free contributed to its worldwide distribution. A further crucial component, which was necessary for displaying the received data which was sent to the requesting computer, is a web browser. Accordingly, the first browser working with a GUI, was released in 1993 by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois: the Mosaic browser. In former times it was required to know exact commands and addresses in order to find information on a computer data base. Since this new browser was freely accessible, it helped to overcome the difficulties associated with using the Internet. Only later did big browsers, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, prevail. That is why it is the release of Mosaic that contributed to an easier way of operating the Web. This common space in turn helped to integrate other resources which were available on the Internet: in particular, these are documents deposited on different computers which can be jointly used thanks to hypertext, further resources such as databases and software which are offered in the Internet as well as other new types of resources including videos for example. On the basis of these findings, it is comprehensible that the Web represents one component of the Internet which finally made it possible to incorporate all other resources as well. The initial purpose of the Internet was primarily to send e-mails. Nowadays the main intention is not only to find but also to place information and data. That is why it is especially the Web which has contributed to the growing public knowledge of the Internet. As a result, its proliferation has been steadily increasing since 1993. In this context, it is in particular the populist and grassroots attempt which supports the creation of networks and computers. Free of any commercial interest, enthusiasts invest their time in order to create and share software. Moreover, they develop programs and publish source codes which are open to everybody. With the intention to find better solutions together, it is especially the spirit of working with each other, in the sense of ‘open-source’, which has contributed to the ongoing developments in the Internet. As a result of their work, more and more resources, e.g. audio broadcasts or video telephony, have been increasingly added to the Internet. Furthermore, the competition among IT companies over providing the most popular browser, has contributed to a continual improvement of the quality in the Internet. Consequently, due to constant developments, existing problems have been gradually solved so that this global computer network slowly became better and faster. This in turn has contributed to steady growth. Nowadays, mankind has arrived at a point, in which resources are still permanently developed and created. However, along with continual development, resources of present times are more speed-demanding. Similar to these observations, Roll notes that user- as well as operator-structural changes have taken place within the Internet. That is why the net is not only gaining in popularity among the average population; an on-going commercialization of content, supported by the introduction of new developed technologies, can be detected at the same time.