Companies that encourage consumers to vote online should be forewarned—they may expect more than you promise, according to research by Michael Norton, Leslie John, and colleagues.
In 2016, the National Environmental Research Council (NERC), a quasi-governmental agency in the United Kingdom, decided it would be fun to let the public vote online to name the country’s newest research vessel. The agency was less pleased when it saw the winning entry: Boaty McBoatface.
Overruling the public’s wishes, NERC named the craft after British naturalist Sir David Attenborough. The public was outraged; newspaper editorials decried the lack of democracy, and citizens protested the unfairness of it all on social media. So much for having a little marketing fun with the public.
Boaty blowback highlights the potential danger of giving consumers the power to vote, even though customer engagement is a primary goal of almost every social media strategy.
The problem: Even though NERC never explicitly promised it would name the boat after the winner in the online poll, the agency implied that it would respect the public’s wishes, say Michael Norton and Leslie John, both professors at Harvard Business School.
“When firms conduct online polls, people frequently submit ridiculous entries; and with social media, those entries will go viral,” says Norton, Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration. “But even when firms never guarantee that consumers will choose the winner, consumers infer an implicit contract and are upset when that contract is violated.”