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- INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ECONOMICS & BUSINESS 2020
ICYREB 2020
SOCIAL PROOF AND PROJECTED BRAND IMAGE:
REACTIONS OF CITIZENS AND GOVERNMENT IN PANDEMIC
BẰNG CHỨNG XÃ HỘI VÀ HÌNH ẢNH THƯƠNG HIỆU
PHÓNG CHIẾU: PHẢN ỨNG CỦA CƯ DÂN
VÀ CHÍNH PHỦ TRONG ĐẠI DỊCH
Ph.D, Van-Anh T. Truong; Ky-Minh Do
University of Economics – The University of Danang
vananhtt@due.edu.vn
Abstract
Since the Covid-19 epidemic appeared, consumers have tended to be involved in a digital
environment such as online shopping, especially spending health care products or services to
reduce virus infection risk. And this, incidentally, allows us to explore the role of social proof in
the pandemic outbreak, especially in the context of the exploding 4.0 industry era. In this article,
we consider the case study about how social proof may impact the way people react to brand
image in the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. In particular, we figure out the influence of social
proof on forming Danang’s projected brand image. Based on the results, some recommendations
for government to communicate in crisis are proposed. Besides, the managerial view focuses on
opportunities and challenges regarding the impact of social proof.
Keywords: social proof; crisis communication; projected brand image; pandemic;
Vietnam
Tóm tắt
Kể từ khi đại dịch Covid-19 bùng phát, người tiêu dùng có xu hướng tham gia môi trường
kỹ thuật số nhiều hơn như mua sắm trực tuyến, giải trí trực tuyến, chi trả cho các sản phẩm và
dịch vụ chăm sóc sức khỏe nhằm giảm thiểu nguy cơ lây nhiễm virus. Điều này cho phép chúng
tôi thực hiện đề tài nhằm tìm hiểu vai trò của bằng chứng xã hội trong đại dịch, đặc biệt trong
bối cảnh cuộc cách mạng công nghiệp 4.0 đang bùng nổ. Trong bài viết này, chúng tôi xem xét
tình huống nghiên cứu về cách thức bằng chứng xã hội có thể ảnh hưởng đến phản ứng về hình
ảnh thương hiệu trong đại dịch Covid-19. Cụ thể, chúng tôi chỉ ra tác động của bằng chứng xã
hội đối với việc hình thành hình ảnh thương hiệu phóng chiếu của Đà Nẵng. Từ kết quả phân
tích, một số khuyến nghị sẽ được cung cấp cho chính quyền để truyền thông trong khủng hoảng.
Bên cạnh đó, góc nhìn quản trị tập trung vào cơ hội và thách thức liên quan đến ảnh hưởng của
bằng chứng xã hội..
Từ khóa: bằng chứng xã hội; truyền thông khủng hoảng; hình ảnh thương hiệu phóng
chiếu; đại dịch; Việt Nam
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1. Introduction
Covid-19 has been transforming the way of conducting marketing related to corporate so-
cial responsibility (He & Harris, 2020), where internet application, health, and safety concerns
are widespread. In the past, there have been many pandemics in human being’s life. Each
pandemic caused dramatic changes in economics, territorial and worldwide approaches, social
attitudes, social perceptions, and citizens’ mentalities as well. Due to the reclassification of
viruses, new virus subtypes have been created, and pandemics assume to occur at intervals of
10-50 years (Potter, 2001). What we have been known is that the climate has changed. Like
other major occasions with a global effect, Covid-19 could potentially alter the way we face the
world, our way of thinking, and how we survive in this world. In spite of the human calamity
of a failure of health, scarred societies, or fractured families, a pandemic-driven lockdown will
impact directly on the economy, which will be a cultural legacy and exist until the end of our
minds as well as those of future eras. Besides, to some extent, human beings’ lives have been
absolutely reflected, which will be a cultural legacy and exist until the end of our minds and
those of future eras. The short-term effect of Covid-19 is realized promptly and seamlessly by
cause social distancing initiatives worldwide. In this manner, we ought to make an exertion to
learn from what happened, learn from the consequences of pandemic outbreaks. Since the Great
Depression of the 1930s, the effect of Covid-19 on the global economy is likely to have been
unparalleled (Euronews, 2020).
At the time of writing this article, however, we ourselves are living in the middle of the
Covid-19 pandemic outbreak all over the world. During this pandemic outbreak, the world has
observed the imposition of international travel bans, lockdowns of entirety nations, and the closure
of points of service. Also, every commercial activity seems to like to be congealed, and we cannot
estimate when this pandemic will play out. Moreover, in the post-pandemic era, we could not
estimate how the big loss lives would be, how heavily the pandemic outbreak would damage.
Nevertheless, we are witnessing extraordinary growth in many online activities such as online
shopping, online entertainment, and social interaction. Vietnam is considered a fertile land with
rich potentials for e-commerce development. Since the Covid-19 epidemic appeared, consumers
have tended to be involved in an online environment such as online shopping, spending health
care services to reduce the risk of infection. More people shop online than usual, contributing to
3-digit growth in just one month since the official pandemic announcement in Vietnam (Thanh
Huyen, 2020). And this, incidentally, gives us the opportunity to demonstrate the effect of social
proof’s psychological phenomenon in the pandemic outbreak, especially in the context of the
exploding 4.0 industry era. Social proof is the most significant psychological phenomenon that
people consider others’ actions in their surroundings to be similar to them (Cialdini, Wosinska,
Barrett, Butner, & Gornik-Durose, 1999). This phenomenon is known as homophily, which is
the propensity of individuals to associate and connect with similar others (McPherson, Smith-
Lovin, & Cook, 2001). This propensity is an aspect that individuals with similar status in society
equivalent likely to be associated with one another (Berger, 1954).
Moreover, social proof is understood that people tend to trust their predecessors, in
particular, those who have used and made reviews of certain products or specifics. Social proof
has a powerful influence on consumers’ buying decisions as well as is tightly integrated into
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many communications messages today. To some extent, social evidence exists because people
are sensitive to social cues from those around them when making decisions. Recognizing this
behavior, many brands have been increasingly applying social proof to their social media plans
and marketing strategies in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak’s crisis economy so
that they can adapt consumer’s reactions and for better crisis management. So the nations, regions,
or localities do.
In this study, we consider the case study about how social proof may impact the way people
react towards the brand image in the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. In particular, we compile the
impact of social proof on forming Danang’s projected brand image. From a managerial
perspective, we will provide several relevant recommendations for the government resolving the
brand image of a country in cases of occasions globally, such as the outbreak of a pandemic and
some disaster all over the world. Moreover, we provide the recognition of other opportunities
and trends in terms of social proof from citizens.
2. Literature review
2.1. Social proof effect
The study of Das, Kramer, Dabbish, and Hong (2014) figured out that people’s awareness
would be higher if social proof was shown through the number of their friends who had chosen
available tools. On the social network, typical types of social proof (comments and number of
likes for each comment) can lessen risk perception (Hofland, 2015). Low social proof (lack of
user interaction and promotion) also decreases the potential of social networking services (Fong,
Au, Lam, & Chiu, 2020) and contributes to the success of localized online deals (N. C. Amblee
& Bui, 2012). Similarly, social proof can be utilized on social media (Hilverda, Kuttschreuter, &
Giebels, 2018) via influencers who have numerous followers to attain a beneficial attitude toward
the brand (Sigurðardóttir, 2019). It is used as a tactic to moderate reciprocity and enhances user
registrations on e-commerce (Roethke, Klumpe, Adam, & Benlian, 2020). Towards digital prod-
ucts, social proof can affect purchases (N. Amblee & Bui, 2011) via participant response bias in-
fluence (Vashistha, Okeke, Anderson, & Dell, 2018). Moreover, under low self-control conditions,
it may benefit healthy consuming (Salmon et al., 2015). Interestingly, social proof has a more
significant impact on participants who have individualistic-collectivistic orientations (Cialdini
et al., 1999).
In terms of social influence, MacCoun (2012) examined social proof as an influence
source that can be seen in many situations (crowd assembling, market share gaining of new
products, popular support mustering of politicians). The author compared different social impact
models to analyze the social proof shared threshold where humans considered various sources
to imitate based on conformity, helping, and deliberation. This consideration creates the social
proof burden.
2.2. Social proof and crisis communication
According to Hu, Li, Zhang, and Zhu (2018), social proof can increase scientists’ partici-
pation in science communication toward the general public. Besides, when combining social
proof with in-science-community meaning, scientists’ communication efforts are boosted. The
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communication effect of donation-related psychological strategy is also enhanced when combin-
ing with social proof strategy (Shearman & Yoo, 2007; Yukizawa, Tsunoda, & Tahir, 2019).
Additionally, Desai, Luce, and Schwartz (2017) detected that social proof influences aver-
sive decisions and the tendency of acting avoidance, although it can enhance the desired behavior.
It can negatively affect perceived medical result accuracy. In the dangerous weather-related avi-
ation cases, a pilot’s decision depends on social proof (Facci, Bell, & Nayeem, 2005). The timely
decisions should be made at the “turning point” that Diamond (2019) linked to nations’ turning
point in crisis to overcome upheavals. Furthermore, social proof informs untrained/inexperienced
human groups (Duncan, Murphy, Shell, & Hopper, 2010) and helps determine which the most
relevant potential supplier/client is (Davar, Hewitt, & Thompson, 2016). Although agreeing with
two main factors (crisis type and performance history), Powers (2018) stated that situational crisis
communication theory overlooks social proof through social media to determine stakeholders’
levels of attribution of responsibility. Therefore, understanding social proof is appropriate for na-
tions without experience to react against the crisis.
2.3. Projected image
Govers and Go (2009) stated that place planners use marketing and media and ICT com-
munication to depict the projected image of a city to their consumers. A projected image contains
the created meaning that defines place identity with narratives and visuals. Intermediaries and
produced imagination here can be media, culture, and arts, which are called induced image for-
mation agents by Gartner (1994). Besides, narratives are (re)told in history, culture, and arts con-
cerning the term “imagined communities” proposed by Anderson (1991).
The term “projected image” is commonly used in tourist destination studies, and Ji (2011)
defined it as the ideas and impressions related to a destination that intentionally or unintentionally
expressed. An intentional image is created for marketing purposes, while an unintentional image
is formed independently (Andreu, Bigné, & Cooper, 2000). This classification is consistent with
image formation sources divided by Gartner (1994), including overt/covert induced image (tra-
ditional advertising, tour operators, wholesalers, newspaper, specialized magazines) and au-
tonomous/organic image (news, popular culture, friends/relatives, experience). This image
formation is attached to media, advertising, policymaking, and urban planning (Shirvani-Dast-
gerdi & De-Luca, 2019).
Overall, the city projected image is formed through the promotional activities of destination
agents (pull factor) and news or information about the place from the other sources (push element)
(Andreu et al., 2000). In other words, information sources can indirectly affect the destination
choice of consumers. Hence, electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) – a form of social proof can
form the projected image of a city unintentionally via citizens’ reactions and similar places’ social
proof can contribute to the projected image via crisis communication of the government.
3. Research methodology
Based on reviewing the previous studies and the premise of Diamond (2019) regarding to
the nations’ behavior towards upheavals, the conceptual framework is shown in Figure 1.
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Source: Proposed by the authors
Figure 1. Conceptual framework
In this study, we examine the social proof impact on the projected brand image. The pro-
jected brand image can be formed intentionally and unintentionally through two sources of social
proof, including electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) and policies of places with similar charac-
teristics. These sources reflect on the city stakeholders’ reactions (an important group in city
branding) and the government to form the city’s projected image. The city can be seen as the
epitome of the nation. Thus, we chose the single case study of Danang to consider the way of
constructing the projected image of this Vietnamese city branding pioneer. The secondary data
from the government’s communication channels and social network was used to consider the so-
cial proof and its influence on Danang residents’ reactions and crisis communication. The qual-
itative content analysis as an interpretation method in case study research was applied to detect
the elements related to variables in the framework.
4. Results and discussion
Social proof and Danang projected image before the pandemic
According to (Onishi, 2019), Danang is a quieter, slower coastal city in Central Vietnam
with an airport and beaches near the urban center and upscale international hotels that can compete
with Phuket (Thailand) and Bali (Indonesia). Due to its safety and historical role during the Viet-
nam War, Danang is ranked No. 5 globally and No. 1 in Southeast Asia as a heritage gateway
destination. This pioneer city for branding in Vietnam has been promoting itself as a fantastic
livable city, aiming many target audiences. Recently, the Vietnamese government has declared
Resolution No. 43 that emphasizes Danang’s regional “nuclear” role.
Danang is a coastal biodiversity city that locates in the middle of Vietnam with an admin-
istrative scope area of 1285.4 km2. Besides its diverse nature, Danang province is rich with min-
erals such as marble, quartz sand, glass sand, peat, and other construction materials. The city is,
however, influenced by storms, tides, tsunami risks, and harsh climate with two distinctly dry,
rainy seasons (Danang UPI, 2013). The Lady Buddha (the female bodhisattva Guanyin or Kuan
Yin) is considered a protector of Danang citizens. This belief is widely spread as social proof
through word-of-mouth.
Similarly, the city-image makers also apply social proof as a way to promote the image of
local people. Defining people’s friendliness and hospitality is Danang’s strength; the Danang
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People’s Committee had launched the “Danang Smile” campaign initially prepared for APEC
2017 (Danang Department of Tourism, 2017). This campaign extended to all public organizations,
related businesses, and local people and deployed for one year later (Ha, 2018), as remarked by
the online photos contest “Danang Smile 2018” (@nucuoidanang2018 on Facebook). As a result,
Danang has enhanced its prestige as a city of events.
To attract investors, Danang IPC (2016) emphasizes its strategic geographic position as
the gateway to the East-West economic corridor, the world cultural heritages, well-developed in-
frastructure, open policy, customer-oriented public services, qualified human resources, and suit-
able environment for pro-business and peaceful living. Besides, the city makes efforts for the
image of an entrepreneurial hub, environmental orientation, and smart. In terms of ‘smart’,
Danang focuses on six smart aspects (governance, economy, environment, society/living, people,
and transportation/mobility) with priority of 16 specific areas, following a classification model
(natural environment – hard infrastructure – ICT-based hard infrastructure – smart services – soft
infrastructure (Danang People’s Committee, 2017, 2018).
Danang has determined that “Tourism development becomes a key economic sector.” At
the same time, it always creates favorable mechanisms and policies to support businesses in in-
vesting and develop, calling for strategic investors to invest in Danang. Besides, the city strength-
ens Danang tourism’s communication activities on different channels, improving the
professionalism and quality of promotion activities towards foreign markets, contributing to
spreading the beneficial social proof to reinforce Danang’s projected image.
Danang has been ensuring a safe tourism environment, creating a friendly and hospitable
image of Danang tourism - those are the ways that the tourism industry has been conducting to
help itself brand image spread to the tourists. The accommodation facilities developed in both
quantity and quality, world-famous tourism brands have been presented in Danang, such as Hyatt,
Pullman, Marriott, InterContinental, Novotel, Hilton, contributing to service quality improvement
and high-quality human resources attraction. The evidence is that many positive reviews or high
recommendations from visitors about these destinations can be seen as social proof that enhances
the Danang projected brand image.
This brand image has gradually been affirmed with many titles certified as Top 10
“Destinations on the Rise” in the World 2015, Top 10 Tourist Destinations in Asia, Asia’s Leading
Festival, And Event Destination 2016.
It can be observed that social proof is effective in spreading positive narratives or anecdotes
via worth-of-mouth or word-of-mouse. Besides, the city government also took advantage of social
proof influences on enhancing local people’s participation to promote a beneficial image. Not
only limited to the citizen community, but social proof is also shown in media publications to at-
tract potential investors by offering quantity and positive reviews of businesses that come from
countries with similar cultural values.
Danang projected image in the Covid-19 pandemic
Intentional source – Government’s crisis communication
At the beginning of the first 3 cases, Danang relied on social proof other localities in Viet-
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nam and worked with Pasteur Institution to self-equipped at all aspects (VNCDC, 2020). Fortu-
nately, the first wave did not put Danang in the stressfulness to create pressure of scarcity or con-
fusion. Facing the second wave of the Covid-19, the Danang government looked at Wuhan’s case,
where the virus was detected for the first time since December. In the official dispatch of the
Danang People’s Committee (2020), social distancing is conducted again based on the directive
No. 16/CT-TTg declared on 31 March 2020 and the directive No. 19/CT-TTg proclaimed on 24
April 2020. Besides, three related-hospitals were put under lockdown to prevent virus transmis-
sions. According to an expert from Singapore, Danang could imitate Wuhan in social distancing
by considering hospitals’ capacity, not paying attention too much on defining the first patient, or
depending on fast testing (VNExpress, 2020). According to Vu Han (2020), the government’s re-
actions are based on the experience of Ho Chi Minh City in the first pandemic wave and the ex-
perience of nations that were already in the second one like Australia, Hong Kong, Israel. This
social proof estimated threats that Danang is put in (40% higher than the first time), leading to
the immediate plan to reduce risk perception of community transmission via home quarantine.
At this time, the communication was about the rewards of medical staff who have signifi-
cant important contributions to Danang Public Health (Minh Hien, 2020). Later, Danang called
for the donation from the community through the campaign named “Energizing for Danang doc-
tors and medical staff” (Phuoc An, 2020) on the official website of Danang Center for Disease
Control (Danang CDC). The evidence of support is shown via image and texts regarding bottled
water, milk, cakes, medical masks, toilet papers. The appeal is emphasized on the notion of “safety
and health,” “humanity.” Additionally, the volunteer activities are promoted not only on official
media but also on forums or social networks influenced by the city government. Notably, social
proof is applied to ease the burdens of blockaded hospitals concerning dual missions of treating
Covid-19 patients whilst performing professional tasks towards other diseases (Xuan Son, 2020).
To help foreigners feel secure about their own health and to ensure that the Covid-19 epi-
demic does not spread in the community, Danang conducts large-scale SARS-CoV-2 testing for
thousands of foreigners living and staying in the city. This is also the first largest scale Covid-19
test for foreigners in Vietnam. From this management, the government has somewhat alleviated
the concern of foreigners living in Danang and reinforced their confidence in a reliable and safe
Danang city in tourists’ minds.
In the context of Danang struggling to fight the pandemic, but still paid attention to organ-
izing large-scale and careful tests for foreigners is a significant effort. This shows that Danang,
in particular, always tries the best for the health of the community and has been implementing
the right motto of humanity during the pandemic, no matter the nationalities of (potential) patients,
which can be seen as the social proof that impacts on Danang brand image. Specifically, people
who tend to visit Danang in the future will have a reasonable premise that comes directly from
someone they know.
However, following the experiences from other Asian nations like Korea, China, applying
e-mask with Bluezone is still limited. Bluezone was mentioned in the official dispatch
6346/UBND-SYT by Danang People’s Committee along with the message “Face mask – Disin-
fection – Distance – No public gatherings – Health Declaration” (Danang Center for Tourism
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Promotion, 2020). As stated by Phong Lan (2020), social proof here is only presented via the
percentage of smartphone users who already installed this app (30% of total Danang users – the
highest ratio compared to the other localities’). Nevertheless, it revealed limitations because caus-
ing confusion concerning the number of contacts in users’ minds.
Unintentional source – Citizens’ reactions towards eWOM
Regarding citizens’ reactions, it is not too difficult to observe how electronic Word-of-
Mouth affects theirs. Besides the Facebook pages such as Đà Nẵng Tôi Yêu (translated title:
Danang I love), Yêu Đà Nẵng (translated title: Love Danang), Danang Viewers, Đà Nẵng Phố,
the business community in Danang helps spread the measures to prevent epidemics via their pro-
motional media publications. Danang citizens positively responded to the messages with popular
hashtags: #bluezone, #nguacovid, #khaibaoyte, #khautrangdientu. By attaching hashtags and tag-
ging at least three friends, one person could introduce the utility of this e-mask to other people
in his/her social groups. This Word-of-Mouse seems to be useful in enhancing the community
consciousness of people who are living in Danang.
Additionally, the concern of city leaders, especially city image-makers, is the avoidance
of isolation. The reason is that the fugitives did not trust the quarantine’s medical conditions or
afraid of consuming too much time than expected. Fortunately, the posts related to home or con-
centrated isolation help reduce visitor’s or residents’ worries. These posts were usually hashtagged
with #nhatkycachly (isolation diary), #staystrongdanang, and #trachnhiemxahoi (social respon-
sibility). The optimistic signals during the quarantine time are even the encouragements for cit-
izens to overcome this crisis. Therefore, social proof from people who experienced quarantine
or already recovered from exposure is informed by the government regularly (i.e., Thanh Thao
and The Vinh (2020), Viet Nam News (2020)).
Generally, Danang’s projected image before the pandemic is about a livable touristic city
with hospitable people while depicted as a safe, resilient city with optimistic and humanist resi-
dents. In any situation, social proof helps form the projected brand image through beneficial re-
actions of citizens and crisis communication of the government based on previous experience
from similar localities.
5. Implications
The findings in this article lead us to make several recommendations. First of all, it is
necessary for Danang to create an interactive online system between citizens and government,
which encourages the positive aspect of social proof for the government resolving crisis promptly
in the field of economy and society under the status of emergency. This absolutely requires an
informatics technology platform, which is synchronized and interacted with citizens’ available
data among managers and government.
Secondly, it might be appropriate for government to interact with consumers by utilizing
online environment, online social media and social networking such as Facebook, Instagram as
one of means of communication to alert them of the risks of a positively perceived subject and
to respond rapidly to customer comments timely (Veil, Buehner, & Palenchar, 2011).
Thirdly, while using social media to interact with respondents, one would be cautious that
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citizens can also be able to manipulate each other by taking action to the information either in
the form of giving comments by buttons of “love/like/wow” reaction and in the form of
commenting directly or sharing these statuses. It would be helpful for authorities to participate
in online discussions on social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Zalo, even chat rooms) to avoid
any conflicts. In this way, the government could take the opportunity to resolve any problem in
crisis due to the pandemic effectively. It can be seen as one of the most advantages which social
proof brings out citizens.
Fourthly, utilizing social proof’s advantages brings the government’s usefulness in
communicating the crisis to citizens. The government can take this as an advantage in branding.
It creates the city’s projected brand image because it is vital for authorities to maintain the brand
image in the citizens’ minds. It is feasible for the government to apply social proof for branding
the projected city image by imitating similar places at the macro level. These allied nations or
cities have similar economic factors and national models. Besides, it should be noted that they
harmonize with the citizens’ community not to spread adverse reactions that can increase
stereotypes, which will be harmful to the brand image in the post-pandemic.
Moreover, the government needs to pay attention to the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic
caused the lockdown of countries globally and led to changes in people’s habits. Hence, it is
necessary to maintain the projected brand image through social proof because the projected image
is formed by city-image makers and other stakeholders, private or public organizations.
Additionally, it is not easy to moderate private organizations and control citizens’ efforts, known
as viral social proof.
Besides limitations related to the lack of previous studies or using other methodologies,
the research also points out a few significant social proof suggestions for the government resolv-
ing several problems that involve maintaining the brand image in the post-pandemic.
6. Conclusions
From our research, it is clear that the Covid-19 pandemic directly affects human beings’
lives in the short and long term. Nevertheless, by reviewing many case studies involving social
proof and its impact on the brand image, the research pointed out that government completely
controls the status of crisis by utilizing the advantages of social proof on social media to com-
municate with citizens timely.
However, this research only proposes some management suggestions for projected brand
image based on reviewing case studies of social proof and crisis management in the pandemic.
Consequently, in the future, researchers need to apply other research methods such as content
analysis techniques or in-depth interviews with different groups of stakeholders apart from re-
viewing the case study to clearly understand the role of social proof in the formation of projected
brand image. Since then, the government can adjust or diversify how to communicate or manage
the pandemic crisis.
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