Employee social media actions, a potential brand destroyer? : A quantitative study regarding how employee's actions on social media influence brand attitude.

Abstract: The communication means used by marketers has fundamentally changed with the rise of social media, however social media has also created a landscape that is hard for the companies to manage. What the employees says on these medias could influence the brand and therefore, companies have formulated guidelines for social media in order to minimize the risk of damaging the brand. The purpose of this study is to explain how employees’ actions on their private social medias change consumers’ brand attitude negatively.This study uses a quantitative approach with a cross-sectional research design. The study uses primary data which was gathered through a questionnaire and was later analyzed through the use of descriptive statistics, ANOVA and Cronbach’s alpha. It was concluded that the results from this study show a negative change in brand attitude in all of the three presented hypotheses. Hence, employee actions on their private social media can change brand attitude negatively.