Showing off customer care: How U.S. airlines deploy impression management by publicizing customer care on twitter

Nargess Tahmasbi, Elham Rastegari

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Organizational Impression Management (OIM) has received increased attention over the recent decades. Studies on OIM via social media platforms investigate the public posts by organizations targeted at general audience. In this study, we highlight the importance of organizations' individual replies to their customers as an indicator of their attempt to conduct and possibly “show-off” their customer care process on social media. We analyze the Twitter accounts of 11 major U.S. airline companies and perform a linguistic analysis on their reply-to-customer tweets. We also categorize airlines into two revenue categories of high and low revenue per available seat miles. Results reveal that airlines in higher revenue category show different behavior in terms of Twitter adoption in their customer care process; both from the tweet rate and linguistic perspectives. We provide insights on how airlines adopted Twitter to practice direct assertive and defensive OIM tactics via public customer care.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication26th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2020
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
ISBN (Electronic)9781733632546
StatePublished - 2020
Event26th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2020 - Salt Lake City, Virtual, United States
Duration: Aug 10 2020Aug 14 2020

Publication series

Name26th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2020

Conference

Conference26th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySalt Lake City, Virtual
Period8/10/208/14/20

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Information Systems
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Library and Information Sciences

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Showing off customer care: How U.S. airlines deploy impression management by publicizing customer care on twitter'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this