Protecting the Franchise Brand in the Age of Social Media

While social media provides numerous inexpensive and easy ways to reach and interact with target customers, these new communication channels present significant challenges to marketing practitioners by empowering consumers to spread messages of which firms have no control over the content. This research examines the importance of corporate social media response strategy in the face of brand negative publicity from a franchise business. Franchise retailers are in the unique position in that franchisor and franchisee have a joint responsibility to maintain the corporate brand image (Rubin 1978). A single negative incident that occurred in one franchise branch may harm the overall brand image and result in customers’ adverse behaviors toward other branches bearing the same franchise brand. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate how the message structure as well as other executional elements of a social media response strategy influence customers’ perception of the franchise brand in the condition of consumer-initiated negative brand publicity. The initial experimental study result demonstrates that issuing a statement about franchise ownership separation is effective in safeguarding the franchise brand. In addition, we examine the roles of two moderators: stance and timing. This research contributes to a better understanding of franchise brand reactions to negative brand publicity and reputation management in a social media context.