378. IJRM. Social Media Champions & Critics.
September 4, 2025
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In this episode, Welf Weiger, Associate Professor of Digital Marketing and Chair of the Marketing Department at Alfaisal University, joins us to discuss research he and his colleagues conducted on social media marketing and customer engagement. Together, their work uncovers surprising findings about how brand advocacy and criticism influence not just public perception, but also the purchasing behavior of the advocate or critic themselves.
Find out:
Which common marketer assumption misses the mark? Contrary to popular belief, customers who publicly praise a brand (advocates) tend to purchase less over time, while those who complain (critics) often increase their buying behavior. This flips the traditional view of engagement on its head.
How should brands rethink their customer engagement strategies? Rather than focusing exclusively on advocates, Weiger suggests that brands actively listen to and engage critics. Constructive responses can deepen customer relationships and reveal opportunities to improve offerings.
Weiger and his colleagues’ research challenges long-held assumptions and offers a more nuanced understanding of how social media engagement impacts real consumer behavior.
Click here for the Research Article
The Up Next podcast’s access to this content is courtesy of the International Journal of Research in Marketing, an international, double-blind peer-reviewed journal for marketing academics and practitioners. IJRM aims to contribute to the marketing discipline by providing high-quality, original research which advances marketing knowledge and techniques. As marketers increasingly draw on diverse and sophisticated methods, IJRM‘s target audience is comprised of marketing scholars, practitioners (e.g., marketing research and consulting professionals) and policymakers.
IJRM aims to be at the forefront of the marketing field with a particular emphasis on bringing timely ideas to market. The journal embraces innovative research with the potential to spur future research and influence practice. Hence, it welcomes contributions in various aspects of marketing. The editors, while accepting a wide array of scholarly contributions from different disciplinary approaches, especially encourage research that is novel, visionary or path breaking.
Interviewee
Welf H. Weiger is an Associate Professor of Digital Marketing and Chair of the Marketing Department at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Goettingen, Germany. His research explores social media marketing, technology-enabled customer engagement, and the role of emerging technologies in shaping consumer behavior.
Prof. Weiger’s work has been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and Information Systems Research. In addition to his academic contributions, Prof. Weiger is actively involved in industry collaborations and has received several research awards recognizing the impact of his work.
Co-Authors
Wendy Moe holds concurrent appointments as Dean’s Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and as an Amazon Scholar. Her research focuses on issues related to online consumer behavior, digital advertising, social media analytics, and customer engagement. With implications for how consumers engage with AI, Wendy analyzes data to quantify consumer behaviors and related latent constructs.
Professor Moe is highly published with her research appearing in numerous leading business journals. She is also the author of the book, Social Media Intelligence. Professor Moe has consulted for numerous corporations and government agencies in the areas of web analytics, social media insights, and product forecasting. Her research in web analytics was the foundation for NetConversions, Inc., an early innovator in the area of online data collection and analysis and was part of the founding team that brought the company from start-up to acquisition in 2004. She has also served as an expert witness in litigation related to online consumer behavior, data tracking and analytics, and online marketing and advertising.
Professor Moe has been on the faculty at the University of Maryland since 2004 and was the Associate Dean of Masters Programs at the Smith School of Business from 2019 to 2022. Prior to that, she was on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a PhD, MA and BS from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as well as an MBA from Georgetown University.
Hauke A. Wetzel (Doctorate, University of Mannheim, Germany; Habilitation, University of Göttingen, Germany) is Professor of Marketing at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. His research reveals performance consequences of initiatives designed to build, maintain, or terminate the relationships with customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders in product and service markets. By adopting a balanced perspective that accounts both for bright and dark side consequences of marketing initiatives his research paves the way for more sustainable marketing practices.
Prof. Wetzel’s work has been published in some of the most impactful marketing journals such as the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and the Journal of Service Research. He serves on the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He has received multiple awards and award nominations for his research and reviewing activities. He is also the Founder and Director of the UNSW Marketing Leadership Forum to shape the future of marketing through mutually beneficial exchange between marketing practice and academia.
Prof. Wetzel has led practice collaborations, worked on consulting projects, and contributed to management practice as a speaker. He has worked with locally and globally leading companies across various industries including, for instance, BASF, EnBW, Bosch, Gebr. Heinemann, NZ Inland Revenue, Optus, Paymark, Porsche, Roche, Saatchi & Saatchi, The Warehouse, or Volvo.
Maik Hammerschmidt is Professor of Marketing and Innovation Management at the University of Goettingen, and Co-Director of the Retail Logistics & Innovation Lab. Prior to joining Goettingen, he was Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Mannheim.
His research focuses on improving the performance outcomes of immersive and AI- based service technologies and of sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiatives. He is among the Top 100 Business Researchers in German-speaking countries (out of 3346 researchers) published by magazine WirtschaftsWoche. He further belongs to the “75 Influential Marketing Professors to Follow,” according to a current ranking published by LinkedIn.
He regularly publishes in the top marketing journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing and Journal of Service Research and has edited four books on marketing performance and marketing efficiency. His article on measuring electronic service quality, published in the Journal of Business Research, received more than 1,400 citations. He serves as editorial board member of the journal Management & Sustainability: An Arab Review (Emerald Publishing), which received the 2023 SDG Initiative of the Year Award. He received numerous awards for academic achievements, including nine Best Paper Awards of the American Marketing Association and the Sheth Foundation as well as the Literati Award from Emerald Publishing.
Follow & Learn More
International Journal of Research in Marketing
Interviewee
Welf Weiger
Co Authors
Wendy Moe
Hauke A. Wetzel
Maik Hammerschmidt