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The power has moved from company to consumer and we have seen an increase in consumer power. Gillian Naylor, writing in the aptly named Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior, created a typology of consumer communication in the digital age, shown in Figure 2.3. Its central focus is how communications have moved from business to consumer (B2C) to consumer to business (C2B) and consumer to consumer (C2C).

Naylor commented how ‘C2B and C2C Marketing communication is increasingly played out in other media and in view of others’ (Naylor, 2017, p. 131). These shared sentiments have given rise to different types of consumer power and she categorised four types of consumer communications: voicers, activists, social networks (including C2C) and irates.

Voicers can share opinions more easily via social media, instead of a binary consumer to business route. Whilst activists can still seek redress from the courts for specific remedies, their messages can be shared using hashtags and the cost of the legal fees could be crowdfunded. Early social networks were considered by Naylor as friends and family – we are not talking about Facebook here! So, in a pre-digital age, stories were shared with co-workers, colleagues and other personal face-to-face networks (F2F). Social media facilitated this content to be imparted to a wider audience online. This model also considers word of mouth (WoM), from a positive and negative perspective.

The final group in Figure 2.3, irates, may have previously taken forms of direct action to gain attention and ensure their point of view was heard. For example, students could have marched, protested and organised demos to complain about specific issues. Does this still occur or have social media campaigns become the new normal?

Naylor further described different types of communication methods such as phone, letter, face-to-face (F2F), company website, social media and via third parties, and within this the concept of user-generated content, noted as a way for consumers to communicate and engage with brands. Chapter 4 considers the area of user-generated content (see Key Term, p. 109) in more depth.

Figure 2.3 Typology of consumer communication (C2B/C2C) in the digital age

Source: Naylor, 2017, p. 134