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Customer-Initiated Conversations on Facebook Pages of Tesco and Walmart

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Information Systems Design and Intelligent Applications

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 863))

Abstract

Businesses are using social media as marketing tools to communicate and interact with customers. Customers initiate conversations on social networking sites of businesses but there is scant research as to why customers interact with businesses on social media in the grocery sector. This paper sets out to explore why customers initiate conversations and how do the other members of the online brand community react to those customer posts. Netnography was used to analyse the customer-initiated posts on Facebook pages of grocery stores. This study reveals that customers start discussions to express their satisfaction and gratitude, to criticise an action of the company, to complain about a product or service, to warn customers about a product or service, to recommend a product or service, or simply to engage in conversation with the community and the company. Findings show that most of customer-initiated posts are about complaints and criticisms. Also customers react more to customer complaints and criticisms than to favourable customer posts. This paper contributes to knowledge by identifying why customers post comments on the official Facebook pages of grocery stores and also by revealing the ways customers react to customer-initiated posts.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université des Mascareignes, Pamplemousses, Mauritius

    Swaleha Peeroo

Authors
  1. Swaleha Peeroo
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Correspondence to Swaleha Peeroo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Engineering, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

    Suresh Chandra Satapathy

  2. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Shri Ramswaroop Memorial Group of Professional Colleges, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Vikrant Bhateja

  3. Universite des Mascareignes, Beau Bassin-Rose Hill, Mauritius

    Radhakhrishna Somanah

  4. School of Science and Technology, Middlesex University, London, UK

    Xin-She Yang

  5. Faculty of Applied Informatics, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Zlín, Czech Republic

    Roman Senkerik

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Peeroo, S. (2019). Customer-Initiated Conversations on Facebook Pages of Tesco and Walmart. In: Satapathy, S., Bhateja, V., Somanah, R., Yang, XS., Senkerik, R. (eds) Information Systems Design and Intelligent Applications. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 863. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3338-5_5

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