온라인 소비자 불매운동의도의 영향요인에 관한 연구 - 온라인 익명성을 중심으로 -

Consumer boycott is important for management decision since it has significant impact on corporate's performance and brand image. Furthermore, increasing online consumer activities lead boycott behavior emerging more diverse and active way in the online environment. Technology has brought a new wave of communication tools. Through the Internet, consumers can participate in boycotting without ever leaving home. In this research, the authors focused on anonymity of online. Anonymous consumers freely express their opinion and comment their intention for the boycotting, but there has been little research of the impact of online anonymity on boycotting behavior. Consumers who perceive a firm's action egregious are more likely to boycott the target firm, and it eventually impact on target firm's image negatively. This research verifies the influence of perceived self-anonymity on the process of consumer boycott behavior. A total 200 completed surveys were collected by responding questionaries on the presented online boycott cases. Three alternative models including self-anonymity node and a standard model were analyzed by Partial Least Squares (PLS) method. The authors tested framework with actual boycott message. The result suggests that perceived self-anonymity has direct impact on boycott participation regardless of the perceived egregious of target firm's action. It resonates with research on social identity theory of deindividuation(SIDE) theory by enhancing situational group norm rather than enhancing personal identity. Then the authors discuss implications for marketers and policy makers on online boycott.