Leveraging Malicious Joy to Influence Consumer Word-of-Mouth Transmittal in Social Networks

The proliferation of user-generated posts about brands on social media has inspired interest by both practitioners and scholars in the factors promoting the diffusion of information within social networks. This has led to efforts by firms to seed and exert control over consumer-driven word of mouth on social media platforms (often referred to as buzz marketing) with varying degrees of success. The question still remains however, as to why information about certain brands is shared more than others. In the current paper we extend the conceptualization originating from the “strength of weak ties” theory to encompass tie valence as a separate dimension alongside tie strength. We then identify consumer schadenfreude (the feeling of joy over another’s misfortune) as a critical motivator of information diffusion between network members who share a negatively valenced tie. Finally, we outline the value to marketers in incentivizing consumers to share information among their negative network ties since this is expected to lead to more widespread sharing of information about low equity brands.