Beyond anger: A neutralization perspective of customer revenge

Abstract

Although previous studies have elucidated emotional and cognitive routes toward customer revenge, they have mainly paid attention to customers’ perceptions about service failures and vendors. Nevertheless, the mechanism underlying how customers justify their revenge behaviors has not been theorized or examined. To advance this line of research, our research draws on neutralization theory to interpret how customers rationalize their revenge behaviors. Furthermore, we distinguish the influences of emotional and rational paths on direct and indirect revenge behaviors across different failure contexts. Two studies were conducted to test our proposed hypotheses. The results demonstrate that dissatisfactory services facilitate customers’ revenge behaviors through the use of neutralization techniques. In addition, compared to neutralization techniques, anger has a more salient effect on direct revenge behaviors, while neutralization techniques dominate anger toward indirect revenge behaviors. Moreover, such differential impacts become more salient in process vs. outcome failures. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.