Twitter for two: investigating the effects of dialogue with customers in social media

AbstractThis article highlights – and compares – the effects of communicating with customers in social media with either one-way communication or dialogue. In an experiment, the authors let randomly selected consumers follow real company Twitters using one of the two strategies for 1 week and then compared their impressions of the companies compared to control groups. They found that while dialogue enhanced brand attitudes and purchase intentions, one-way communication did not. This effect can be explained, in part, by the increased perceived expense and perceived caring signaled by using dialogue. Implications for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.Keywords: Social MediaTwitterSignaling EffectsCustomer Relationship ManagementElectronic Word of Mouth AcknowledgementsThe authors would gratefully like to acknowledge the generous support of the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg's foundations as well as the Jan Wallander's and Tom Hedelius' foundation that made this research possible. The authors would also like to thank Sofia Kocken and Carin Skoghagen for helping to collect data for this study.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.