Research On Consumer Response And Coping Strategies Of Brand Online Rumors

The era of Internet economy provides great convenience for enterprises to carry out brand promotion and marketing activities,but it also challenges enterprises to deal with online rumors.On the one hand,the online rumors may affect consumers' trust in the brand,thereby interfering with the company's normal business activities,causing losses to the company,and even triggering corporate crisis.But on the other hand,the spread of online rumors may also bring benefits to enterprises,and can increase the exposure and popularity of brands to a certain extent.In the event of brand network rumor spreading,the attitude of consumers determines the final trend of the event.The research on consumers' psychology and behavior in the face of brand rumors is the basis for enterprises to formulate brand online rumor management strategies,which has important practical significance.Focusing on the reaction and handling behavior of consumers in the face of brand online rumors,this paper carrys out research from the following aspects.Firstly,this paper systematically combs and summarizes the generation mechanism of brand network rumors and the consumer behavior in the process of rumor spread.Secondly,this paper constructs a theoretical model of consumer reaction and processing mechanism of brand online rumors based on the theory of persuasive knowledge.And the effects of consumer self-efficacy,interpersonal trust,social media trust and brand familiarity on consumer persuasive knowledge and brand trust are analyzed empirically.Then,an evolutionary game model of brand online rumor propagation is constructed based on prospect theory,and the value function of prospect theory is used to analyze the income payment matrix in the model.It also considers that the players may overestimate or underestimate the event probability.Finally,numerical experiments and simulation analysis are carried out by using MATLAB software,and actual cases are used to further verify the operability of the evolutionary model to deal with real brand online rumor events.The research results show that the persuasive knowledge model can be applied to explain how consumers respond to brand online rumors on social media.Consumers will produce persuasion knowledge when they are faced with brand rumors on social media.Consumers' self-efficacy and familiarity with brands have a significant positive impact on the generation of persuasion knowledge.Social media trust has a significant negative impact on the generation of persuasion knowledge,and the generated persuasion knowledge has a positive impact on consumer brand trust.Secondly,due to the limited rationality of both enterprises and consumers,there are two evolutionary stable strategies in the brand online rumor spreading event.In reality,enterprises may underestimate the probability of public opinion crisis caused by online rumors and overestimate the cost of coping with online rumors,or underestimate the benefits of effective rumor suppression strategies,which makes enterprises respond negatively to rumors.In the face of brand online rumors,consumers' high risk perception will also make it difficult for consumers to trust enterprises.The conclusion of this study provides management enlightenment for enterprises to carry out brand management and deal with brand online rumors.In the last part of the paper,it provides some suggestions for companys to carry out brand rumor management strategies according to the research conclusions.