As a consequence of the ongoing globalization, more and more corporations start to target an international audience. Accordingly, consumers have to deal with a rising number of product offers. When trying to filter only relevant information which are interesting for themselves, consumers have to decrypt at the same time what is the meaning behind the different advertising messages circulating in daily life. Consequently, it is comprehensible that people become more and more stressed as well as angry nowadays. In order to get a better understanding of contemporary consumer resistance, this study is aimed at giving an overview on this topic. Only by explaining postmodernity in detail, it is possible to show what has changed in terms of consumer culture compared to the era of modernity. This is the starting point for the investigation on consumer resistance within the underlying study. In this sense, it is shown why people develop critical attitudes and what finally makes them willing to participate. On the basis of these findings, different forms of resistance are considered. The extent to which the Internet has an influence on consumer behavior and resistance is investigated as well. After presenting how conditions for consumers have improved especially in the times of Web 2.0, the extent to which they are more willing to actively take part in consumer resistance is examined in the next step. For this purpose investigations based on real findings were examined. Reading this study people shall understand what consumer resistance means. Here included are different forms of consumer resistance as well as consumers’ motivation in participating. In turn, also corporations can profit from these insights given. Here it has to be kept in mind that understanding consumers’ behavior also gives marketers a great chance to profit from their critics.

Textprobe: Chapter 3, Immersion in the online world – new opportunities for consumers: This chapter serves the function of explaining how things, related to consumption from the point of view of the individual, have improved. After giving an overview of the Internet’s history, the current development in the online world as well as the resulting new ways of communicating with others, the content and design of these mainly private anti-brand sites shall be investigated. The final intention is in turn to understand how powerful these pages are. Thus, the underlying question is if the Internet is influential enough in convincing others to take part in consumer resistance. 3.1, Deeper insights into the term ‘Internet’: Even though many people worldwide are nowadays familiar with the Internet, the number of those users who know about its history is quite low. A similar observation can be made by asking people what the Internet is. In order to provide a deeper insight into the online world, some information about the Internet’s historical development as well as its characteristics shall be given. 3.1.1, How everything began – from a military project to the WWW: The birth of the Internet dates back to the year 1969. In order to create a connection between computers from scientific and the military fields at different locations, the ARPAnet was set up on behalf of the American Ministry of Defence. This network which was developed on the basis of a project at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) represents the first prototype of the Internet. Within this first existing connection of multiple computers, a central host was linked with other network terminals which were arranged in a star shape. Prerequisites for the birth of the Internet were accordingly the founding of faculties of computer science at leading American universities which were later on linked to the network, as well as the research in the area of a time-sharing concept (different terminals using one mainframe). Despite all the new technical opportunities which emerged, the system was still very limited and susceptible. That is why solutions were sought in order to make it possible to connect the different systems to each other. In addition to the development of an Interface Message Processor (IMP) which served as a translator so that data could be transferred with the help of a uniform system, regardless of the respective system at a location, the introduction of a new transfer protocol, the precursor of the present Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), contributed to a more reliable sending and receiving of data. Within this new protocol, the idea of packet switching was applied. Due to the fact that the ARPAnet could be only accessed by universities which were taking part in military researching, other scientific networks emerged in time. Also in Europe, the first networks of this kind were launched in 1982. Making the TCP/IP become the standardized transfer protocol for all those networks which were connected to the ARPAnet, a further step towards a uniform basis was made in the same year. However, in 1990 access to the Internet was still reserved for military and scientific persons. Even though this ban was revoked one year later, so that the opportunity was given to use the Internet for commercial interests as well, a profound knowledge in regulating command lines was still needed. At the same time, programs had gradually prevailed which used a graphical user interface (GUI) in order to operate on the Internet. Taking for example the physics laboratory Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) in Switzerland a program called World Wide Web (WWW) was developed in 1989 out of the idea to establish a kind of intranet with a graphical user interface. This resulting system, through which it was possible to organize information on a distributed network, was based on hypertext. In this sense, in order to convert pictures, texts as well as other sources into hypertext pages, the hypertext mark-up language (HTML) was developed. Reading documents over the Web still requires this language today. In turn, to identify this data perfectly so that it can be found within a common space, the so-called ‘Web’, a universal resource locator (URL) is used. The decisive advantage of this program was its public accessibility. That is why the possibility of using the Web for free contributed to its worldwide distribution. A further crucial component, which was necessary for displaying the received data which was sent to the requesting computer, is a web browser. Accordingly, the first browser working with a GUI, was released in 1993 by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois: the Mosaic browser. In former times it was required to know exact commands and addresses in order to find information on a computer data base. Since this new browser was freely accessible, it helped to overcome the difficulties associated with using the Internet. Only later did big browsers, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, prevail. That is why it is the release of Mosaic that contributed to an easier way of operating the Web. This common space in turn helped to integrate other resources which were available on the Internet: in particular, these are documents deposited on different computers which can be jointly used thanks to hypertext, further resources such as databases and software which are offered in the Internet as well as other new types of resources including videos for example. On the basis of these findings, it is comprehensible that the Web represents one component of the Internet which finally made it possible to incorporate all other resources as well. The initial purpose of the Internet was primarily to send e-mails. Nowadays the main intention is not only to find but also to place information and data. That is why it is especially the Web which has contributed to the growing public knowledge of the Internet. As a result, its proliferation has been steadily increasing since 1993 (HTTP://WWW.GESCHICHTE-DES-INTERNET.PHP, COMP. JORDAN 1999: 33 ET SQQ.). In this context, it is in particular the populist and grassroots attempt which supports the creation of networks and computers. Free of any commercial interest, enthusiasts invest their time in order to create and share software. Moreover, they develop programs and publish source codes which are open to everybody. With the intention to find better solutions together, it is especially the spirit of working with each other, in the sense of ‘open-source’, which has contributed to the ongoing developments in the Internet. As a result of their work, more and more resources, e.g. audio broadcasts or video telephony, have been increasingly added to the Internet. Furthermore, the competition among IT companies over providing the most popular browser, has contributed to a continual improvement of the quality in the Internet. Consequently, due to constant developments, existing problems have been gradually solved so that this global computer network slowly became better and faster. This in turn has contributed to steady growth. Nowadays, mankind has arrived at a point, in which resources are still permanently developed and created. However, along with continual development, resources of present times are more speed-demanding (COMP. JORDAN 1999: 45 ET SQQ.). Similar to these observations, Roll notes that user- as well as operator-structural changes have taken place within the Internet. That is why the net is not only gaining in popularity among the average population an on-going commercialization of content, supported by the introduction of new developed technologies, can be detected at the same time (COMP. 2003: 10 ET SEQ.).

• Social Media

• Postmodernity

• consumer-corporation relationship

• internet

• marketing

Martin König was born in 1983 in Bernburg/Saale (Germany). After receiving a Bachelor degree in International Business Studies from the Paderborn University, he continued his academic career at the Viadrina University in Frankfurt/Oder. There he studied International Business Administration with an emphasis on marketing. Thanks to his additional studies at Reims Management School (France), for which he was awarded a M.Sc. degree (Diplôme de Supérieure de Commerce), the author could continually enlarge his knowledge in marketing. Currently Martin König is working in the field of online marketing as an affiliate manager. Since entering the world of affiliate marketing in 2010, he combines his theoretical knowledge with practical experiences. In order to be steadily up to date in online marketing, the author regularly visits both training events and fairs.