Contesting the Legitimacy of Negative Online Customer Engagement

Social media is a complex, interactive and co-creative environment where marketers seek to promote brand values. The construct of online consumer engagement (OCE) has emerged as a key metric of social media marketing outcomes. Research has focused on positive OCE resulting and there is limited insight into the critical drivers of negative OCE. This paper draws on both Practice Theory and Institutional Theory to identify a range of customer and organisational interaction practices during episodes of negative OCE within the customer services Facebook pages of retail banks. Results show misalignment in accounts of practices with customer narratives drawing upon moral legitimisation strategies, external bank narratives drawing on regulatory and cognitive legitimacy whilst internal organisational narratives mobilise pragmatic legitimacy. The empirical work uses Institutional theory to posit that OCE may be targeted at a broader network of actors than has been previously conceptualised.