INFORMS Journal Marketing Science New Study Key Takeaways:
BALTIMORE, MD, March 5, 2024 – New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science has found that companies and brands that have aligned themselves with Black Lives Matter (BLM) suffered a negative impact at the hands of consumers.
The study, “How Support for Black Lives Matter Impacts Consumer Responses on Social Media,” found that the negative impact tied to BLM support included a decline in consumer social media activity, measured in the number of followers and “likes,” along with an increase in negative commentary through social media posts.
The authors of the study are Yang Wang, Marco Shaojun Qin, Xueming Luo and Yu (Eric) Kou, all from Temple University’s Fox School of Business.
The study sought to investigate how consumers respond to brands taking a stance on social media about racial justice movements in four ways:
“One of the interesting findings is that negative associations were stronger when more brands posted in support of BLM, while concurrently posting self-promotional messages,” says Wang. “This suggests that large-scale BLM allyship programs that also included self-promotional posts created a ‘bandwagon effect’ that had a negative impact on those brands.”
“Brands that sought to capitalize by jumping on the bandwagon by allying with salient racial justice movements should have heeded caution,” adds Luo. “And they should not have been too quick to resume business as usual with their product promotions while at the same time supporting BLM. Nevertheless, some brands with more historical prosocial posting on social media and with socially oriented missions suffered less from the negative effects and may even benefit from supporting BLM.”
The authors note that, going forward, brands that do not want to sit on the sidelines when major racial justice issues arise should consider making “prosociality” a core tenet of its social media strategy and brand mission long before the issue trends in the news and on social media. Brands should take care not to appear as though their support is seen as an afterthought or driven by “bandwagon” motives.
About INFORMS and Marketing Science
Marketing Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly marketing journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of the interface between consumers and firms. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for the data and decision sciences. More information is available at www.informs.org or @informs .
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“How Support for Black Lives Matter Impacts Consumer Responses on Social Media”