Negative Word Of Mouth Research Articles

The effect of fellow customer on complaining behaviors: the moderating role of gender

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the joint effect of the focal customer’s gender and fellow customer’s gender in influencing voice complaint intentions and intention to convey negative word of mouth (NWOM).Design/methodology/approachParticipants were randomly assigned to one of the two dining conditions (same-gender fellow customer vs opposite-gender fellow customer). Their intention to voice a complaint and to spread NWOM were measured after reading a scenario describing a service failure. A 2 (focal customer gender: male vs female) × 2 (fellow customer: same gender vs opposite gender) between-subjects quasi-experimental design was conducted to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results demonstrate that female customers’ voice complaint intentions were significantly higher when a fellow customer’s gender was female rather than male. In contrast, regardless of the fellow customer’s gender, no significant differences in voice complaint intentions were found among male customers. The results further indicate that voice complaint intentions mediate the impact of a fellow customer’s gender on intention to spread NWOM among female customers. However, both female and male participants show equally high levels of voice complaint intentions in the context of fine-dining restaurant.Practical implicationsThis study broadens the understanding of customer complaining behavior and also provides insights to practitioners on how to manage customers who are in same- and mixed-gender situations.Originality/valueThis research extends the literature on agency–communal theory and complaining behaviors by examining the role of a fellow customer’s gender influencing the focal customer’s intentions to voice complaints and to spread NWOM.

Who Deserves Faulty Products? How Blaming the Victim Prevents Consumer Punitive Action

A core requirement of a functioning free‐market system is that consumers hold companies accountable for selling faulty products. Following a harmful product failure, any blame that is incorrectly directed toward the victim may threaten consumer well‐being. Four experiments—in contexts of both fictitious and actual high‐profile product failures—show that this may in fact occur. The findings show that for a victim possessing immoral character: (a) consumers exaggerate blame because, (b) the victim is seen as deserving of suffering in general and, as a result, (c) consumers are less likely to take punitive action against the company (e.g., petition signing, negative word of mouth, and supporting financial justice). One field experiment and three online experiments converge to show that morality's effects are unique from other traits (e.g., sociability), but may be attenuated based on severity of harm to the victim and consumers’ own beliefs about justice. In sum, the current research furthers understanding of how and why victims are blamed, how doing so may threaten consumer and societal well‐being, and how it might be prevented.

Friend or the Foe: An Islamic Ethical Perspective on the Online Consumers Reviews

The advent of internet has enabled the marketers to expand their reach globally. But at the same time, it opens avenues for manipulative practices to the unknown customers by the unknown sellers. Companies not only make false promises and sponsor bloggers and key opinion leaders to obtain incentivized online reviews, but also involve their employees to act as pseudo customers to praise the goods and services. These acts of deception, cheating and manipulative practices are targeted to persuade innocent and uninformed customers to make a purchase decision. These acts are condemned by the customers who raise their voice online and offline in the form of negative WOM resulting in bad reputation and negative perception. Scholars and practitioners alike have been increasingly concerned about such practices. Islam has clearly set rules of business and strictly prohibited such acts of deception and manipulation. This paper is an attempt to review and synthesize literature on the topic and develop a link between Islamic teachings and issues faced by marketing professionals in the present era. Three focus group interviews followed the literature review to get the insights from industry professionals, scholars, academicians and practitioners. The participants of focus groups unanimously agreed with the fact that consumers should not be exploited by creating and sharing fake information and the companies should refrain from exaggeration and false claims. The findings from focus group interview have been analyzed in the light of literature and the views are mentioned at the end of the paper.

The effect of consumer emotions on outcome behaviors following service failure

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the role of emotions that consumers experience following service failures and to assess the effects of each of these emotions on important behavioral outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis paper extends the work of Wetzer et al. (2007) and draws upon the existing literature to test a series of research hypotheses tying emotions to four important behavioral outcomes primarily using stepwise regression.FindingsWhen a service failure occurs, customers experience any of a variety of negative emotions. The effect on behavioral outcomes depends on the specific emotion experienced by the consumer. The current research, which benefits by using retrospective experience sampling, finds that frustration is the predominant emotion experienced by customers following service failure, but that anger, regret and frustration affect behavioral outcomes. Uncertainty also plays a role.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should investigate the antecedents of propensity for emotions and predisposition toward industries, as well as the consequences of word-of-mouth (WOM) praise and WOM activity. Additionally, emotions could be examined by service stage. Several other moderators could be investigated, including severity, complaining behavior, repeat occurrence, service importance, remedies and forgiveness, product vs process failures, tenure, gender and age.Practical implicationsThe current research emphasizes the importance of understanding which emotion is being experienced by a customer following service failure to identify the behavioral outcomes that will be most impacted. The specific managerial implications depend upon the specific emotional response experienced by the customer and are discussed separately for anger, regret and frustration. Service personnel must be trained to recognize and address specific customer emotions rather than to provide a canned or generalized response.Originality/valueTo date, there has been little, if any, systematic research into the effects of multiple discrete negative emotions on multiple desirable behavioral outcomes. The current study examines six discrete emotions. Predominant emotions are differentiated from emotional intensity. The behavioral outcomes of reconciliation and reduced share-of-wallet are added to the traditional outcomes of repatronage intentions and negative WOM. While existing research tends to rely on a scenario approach, this study uses the retrospective experience sampling method. The authors distinguish between mixed emotions and multiple emotions. The relative effects of disappointment and regret are examined for each of the four outcomes. Finally, importance-performance map analysis was applied to the findings to prioritize managerial attention. Numerous managerial and research implications are identified.

Dark Side of Consumer Behavior: Brand Hate and Anti-Brand Actions

Negative consumer emotion towards brand like brand hate is a common phenomenon nowadays which causes anti-brand actions. This study aims to find out the influence of unfavorable brand image and negative past experiences on consumer brand hate and its impact on negative word of mouth and exit. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the 157 respondents who were the users of different mobile brands. The Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The findings of the study suggest that negative brand image has significant influence on consumer brand hate which has positive influence consumers to take anti-brand actions like negative word of mouth and exit. The study should have included other constructs that causes consumer brand hate with large sample size. The study provides guidelines for marketers as they can understand how brand hate is impacted and its consequences.

Importance of CPEC in the Light of Public and Private Investment from Pakistan: A Conceptual Paper Based on Archival Data

CPEC is one of the most important projects for the economy of Pakistan &also treated as crown jewels for the entire region. Massive research work has already been done on the areas which project will cover & also on opportunities and threats which project which bring etc. Although there is minimal work on the importance of CPEC on different sectors associated with the economy and there is almost no work on the realized importance of CPEC for the policy makers of Pakistan. Therefore a study is required which can provide framework for the analysis of importance the project really has for policy makers so the stake holders might consider any negative word of mouth regarding the project. Hence the major objective of this study is to drive a framework for the importance of CPEC in the light of public and private investment from Pakistan. For this purpose seventeen years data has been collected from the databank of World Bank to determine the trend of investments from Pakistan to support CPEC. Moreover data from China going global Index has also been used to answer research claims and objective regarding CPEC importance for Pakistan. Analysis highlighted that there is immense importance of FDI from China which has significantly increased after the initiation of CPEC. Keywords: CPEC, Pak-China Relationships, FDI, Investment DOI : 10.7176/JESD/10-11-08 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Do service firm employee and customer relations matter for customer forgiveness in service recovery?

Purpose Customer forgiveness is gaining importance in service recovery. This study debates that service firm employees and the customers’ relations are supportive resources for the customer while deciding for forgiveness. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to test the effects of structural, relational and cognitive social capital on customer forgiveness and thereof the effects of customer forgiveness on negative word of mouth and repatronage intentions. Design/methodology/approach Partial least squares–structural equation modeling was employed to test the hypothesized relations on usable data from 428 banking customers who registered their complaint recently. Findings Results show that structural, relational and cognitive social capital explained a unique variance in customer forgiveness with significant positive influence, whereas customer forgiveness has a significant positive effect on repatronage intentions and a significant negative influence on negative word of mouth. Originality/value Customer forgiveness is a convincing idea in service recovery. This study proposed and empirically verified that social capital in relations of service firm employee and customer relations is important for customer forgiveness to minimize negative word of mouth and enhance repatronage intentions.

Do Irritations of Ads in Line Really Matter?

The Advertisings (ads) in LINE are the marketing promotions for enterprises to increase consumers’ purchase intentions. People are likely to feel ads as unwelcome and irritating information and get unfavorable behavioral intentions. Information quality (IQ) and access convenience are the key factors of people satisfaction to decrease their unfavorable behavioral intentions including complaints, blockade, and negative WOM (NWOM). With data collected from a sample of 230 people in Taiwan, the results got the IQ and access convenience of ads impacted on unfavorable behavioral intentions through satisfaction and was particularly moderated by irritation with AMOS 21.0. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Praise or revenge: why do consumers post about organizations on social media

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate motives for engaging in electronic word of mouth (eWOM) about organizations on social media sites. This study explores motives for posting positive eWOM and motives for posting negative eWOM. It also investigates whether existing WOM frameworks adequately capture consumers’ motives for spreading eWOM within the context of social media. This study seeks to confirm established motives in literature while also identifying new motives specific to social media.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative study was conducted using the critical incident technique. In all, 64 positive incidents and 60 negative incidents were analyzed.FindingsThis study provides a typology for understanding consumers’ motivations for engaging in positive and negative WOM within the context of social media. Four new motives for sharing eWOM are identified; eight established WOM motives are re-confirmed; and new subcategories for eWOM motives are proposed. The study also finds that further refinement of WOM motives and scales within a social media context is needed.Research limitations/implicationsAn integrated conceptual framework of both positive and negative motives is developed to illustrate a more comprehensive model of motives of eWOM within social media. Managerial implications for managing negative eWOM and amplifying positive eWOM are discussed. A limitation is that the study is exploratory in nature.Originality/valueThis study identifies new motives for sharing eWOM, re-labels existing WOM and eWOM motives with more descriptive and comprehensive titles and confirms established WOM and eWOM motives within the context of social media. This study is conducted across multiple firms and industries, leading to more generalizable results.

The role of crisis typology and cultural belongingness in shaping consumers’ negative responses towards a faulty brand

PurposePrevious research on brand crisis has introduced the difference between a values-related crisis and a performance-related crisis. However, little remains known regarding consumers’ varying negative responses towards these two different types of brand misconduct. This paper aims to investigate and compare consumers’ affective and behavioural negative reactions (i.e. negative word of mouth and purchase intention) towards a faulty brand during a values-related crisis and a performance-related crisis by testing the mediation of negative emotions and introducing the moderating role of cultural belongingness (collectivistic vs individualistic).Design/methodology/approachThe authors tested a model of moderated mediation in a cross-cultural investigation on a sample of 229 Italian and Asian consumers. The study is a 2 (cultures: collectivistic vs individualistic) × 2 (crisis: performance-related vs values-related) between-subjects experimental design. The moderated mediation model shows that consumers’ negative reactions (negative word of mouth and negative purchase intention) towards a faulty brand involved in different crisis typologies is explained by the mediating role of negative emotions, and that this mediation depends on a consumer’s cultural belongingness.FindingsThe results suggest that consumers belonging to a collectivistic culture (e.g. Asian culture) tend to react in a more severe and strict manner when faced with a values-related brand crisis event then when faced with a performance-related crisis. The arousal of negative emotion towards a brand represents the mediating variable in behavioural responses (i.e. negative word of mouth and purchase intention).Originality/valueThe present study extends current knowledge in the field of consumers’ negative response to brand irresponsibility behaviours while introducing the role of crisis typology and cultural belongingness. In particular, individualistic people are more sensitive to a values-related crisis in comparison with a performance-related one. The findings of this study have strong managerial implications for defining effective response strategies to negative events involving brands in different markets.

APOLOGY AND COMPENSATION STRATEGY ON CUSTOMER FORGIVENESS AND NEGATIVE WORD OF MOUTH

The service provider could not totally guarantee the service process without any failure at all. This study aims to measure the influence of service recovery strategy towards customer forgiveness and negative word-of-mouth (WOM) as the effect of service failure. The service recovery strategy is performed in three types of vignette: apology, compensation, and apology-compensation. Vignette was given to 94 participants who have encountered service of airline. The result of ANOVA shows that apology compensation achieves the highest score relates to forgiveness. The interesting result of this study shows that even the customers forgive the service provider due to the service failure they did, this cannot diminish the intention of negative WOM. This study offers an implication to the company in order to pay attention regarding the compensation and the spread of negative WOM to the other customers

Credibility of negative online product reviews: Reviewer gender, reputation and emotion effects

The electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) literature supports the robust finding that negative reviews are generally more influential to consumer behavior than positive ones. Moreover, recent studies suggest that much of the negativity bias is driven by the distinct emotions embedded in the content of negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) and the interaction effects between emotions and other source factors. Although the gender of the information source is a common heuristic used in message evaluation, this is the first study to examine the effect of gender stereotypes on emotional NWOM. Two web-based experiments show that when reviewer reputation cues are present, emotional content in NWOM lowers the credibility of male reviewers and the helpfulness of their reviews, but does not affect female-authored reviews. In contrast, when reputation cues are absent, the presence of emotions in NWOM lowers the credibility of female reviewers, but not that of male reviewers. The reputation cue has a positive effect on NWOM credibility and helpfulness. Findings help companies understand the impact of gender stereotypes in online NWOM and detect the most helpful NWOM in order to correct product issues and improve future eWOM.

Target and position article - Analyzing the impact of user-generated content on B2B Firms' stock performance: Big data analysis with machine learning methods

Marketing scholars are interested in the big data of user-generated content (UGC) from social media platforms. However, the majority of current UGC studies have been conducted in the business-to-consumer (B2C) context. To fill the knowledge gap in business-to-business (B2B) research, we investigate whether UGC has differential impacts on stock performance for B2B and B2C firms by using big data. We collect a large dataset of 84 million tweets from 20.3 million Twitter accounts and 8 years of stock data for 407 companies from the S&P500 index. The results from machine learning methods are transformed into a monthly panel data. We conduct fixed effects model on the panel data. We find that UGC has a significant impact on firms' stock performance and that its impact on stock performance is much stronger among B2C firms than among B2B firms. While consumers' positive sentiment does not play a significant role in stock performance, consumers' negative sentiment and WOM significantly impact stock prices.

Consumer responses to corporate social irresponsibility: The role of moral emotions, evaluations, and social cognitions

AbstractWe investigate the mediating roles of moral emotions and attitudes between perceptions of corporate irresponsible actions, on the one hand, and consumer responses, on the other hand, and further examine their contingencies based on consumer social cognitions. Our findings show that, for corporate transgressions, multiple social cognitions (moral identity, relational and collective self‐concepts, and affective empathy) moderate the elicitation of negative moral emotions (contempt and anger) and overall evaluations (attitudes), which, in turn, lead to negative responses toward the company (negative word of mouth, complaint behaviors, and boycotting). Our study adds to extant research on corporate social irresponsibility by examining three generic reactions people have toward corporate social irresponsibility and demonstrating important boundary conditions. In addition, hypotheses are tested on a sample of adult consumers. Implications for communication by firms are considered.

Are tattoos still a taboo?

PurposeAs tattoos increase in popularity, questions persist regarding their impact on customer perceptions. To help shed light into this issue, this paper aims to explore the impact of tattooed restaurant servers in the context of service failures. Through the agency and communion theory, the authors propose that a female server with tattoos induces higher levels of negative word of mouth (WOM) intention than her male counterpart. Furthermore, the authors propose that perceived competence mediates this effect.Design/methodology/approachThrough a 2 (tattoos status: yes, no) × 2 (server’s gender: male, female) experimental design, a panel of consumers were exposed to a restaurant service failure scenario with a photograph of a server. Depending on the condition, the server was either a male or female and had (or not) a tattoo on their left arm and neck. The same tattoo design was used for both genders.FindingsThe findings indicate that, in a service failure context, customers’ propensity to generate negative WOM does not differ across tattooed (vs non-tattooed) servers. However, contrary to the expectations of the authors, people tend to react more negatively to a male (vs female) server with tattoos.Originality/valueResearch on tattoos in the customer service context is scant, especially in hospitality. Furthermore, no previous study on tattoos has empirically tested a mediation process explaining differences in customer perceptions. Contrary to previous findings, this study demonstrates that an exposure to male (vs female) tattooed servers increases customers’ propensity to generate negative WOM. In other words, the type of profession coupled with the employees’ gender might influence customer perceptions. Furthermore, as customers’ propensity to generate negative WOM did not increase when served by a tattooed (vs non-tattooed) employee, managers in aesthetic labor industries, such as the foodservice business, can be more accepting of employees with tattoos.

Corporate Apology After Bad Publicity: A Dual-Process Model of CSR Fit and CSR History on Purchase Intention and Negative Word of Mouth

This article proposes and tests a dual-process model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication. Building on the framing theory and associative network theory, the authors examine how including statements about a company’s CSR fit and CSR history in apology statements can affect purchase intention and negative word of mouth (NWOM). Perceived integrity, attitude toward the apology statement, and attitude toward the company are sequential mediators that will subsequently affect purchase intention and NWOM. The results show that CSR fit will positively affect purchase intention and negatively affect NWOM through increased perceived integrity and attitude toward the apology statement, which will positively affect their attitude toward the company. The findings also show that CSR history will positively affect purchase intention and negatively affect NWOM through increased perceived integrity and attitude toward the apology statement, which will positively affect their attitude toward the company.

Personal level causes of bullying and negative word of mouth: Migrant workers’ perspective

Bullying behaviors are observed in all organizations and in all cultures, across the globe. Extant bullying literature is found in the context of Europe whereas Eastern perspective has been ignored at large. This study investigated the nexus between causes of personal level bullying, bullying behaviors, and negative word of mouth from a migrant worker's perspective. Under a cross sectional research design, data were collected from skilled migrant workers, working in United Arab Emirates. Scale items were selected for this study in the context of migrant workers and 187 useable responses were retained for final data analysis, with 49.8% response rate. SPSS (20.0) for demographic analysis and Smart PLS 3.2.8 were used for structural equation modeling. Results supported the argument that on the basis of personal causes of bullying, migrant workers experienced work related and personality related bullying behavior, which triggered further negative word of mouth.

Antecedents of WOM: Product Appraisal and Brand Relationship as Drivers of Customer Referral Dimensions

Word of Mouth (WOM) is typically investigated as an exogeneous variable influencing consumers´ future product purchases. Whereas drivers of positive and negative WOM are well investigated, antecedents of different types of positive WOM are hardly differentiated. This research investigates the multifaceted nature of consumers’ product and brand encounters as antecedents of distinct WOM referral dimensions. A large-scale cross-sectional survey connects WOM incidents with consumers’ a-priori product and brand interactions. Seemingly unrelated regressions are applied to disentangle the effects of product appraisal and brand relationship on different dimensions of customer referral. Whereas product appraisals evoke functional referral, brand relationships particularly foster prescriptive and emotional WOM. Researchers are thus encouraged to inspect ex ante experiences with products and brands to better explain and predict consumers’ WOM behavior. Practitioners can use the derived insights to proactively steer desirable forms of WOM by designing supportive consumer experiences.

Socially Assistive Robots Diffusion in Elderly Care A Pre-Adoption Study by Agent-Based Modeling

This paper investigates socially assistive robots’ acceptance and diffusion in eldercare from dependentliving seniors’ perspective by combining data science with the agent-based model of cellular automata able to unveil the emergence of behavioural pattern in a complex system as the result of individual agent interactions. The ratio behind this methodology is that, while social dynamics are often underestimated, they are determinant for the success of an innovation, especially in a pre-market context, in which users do not know the product. In this way, by looking at how opinions are formed and Word of Mouth circulates among social agents, this paper identifies a cluster of enthusiastic seniors, which, if properly addressed, could behave as social hub and influence innovation success. At the same time, however, this work unveils the presence of extreme attitudes and Negative Word of Mouth (NWOM), which, in turn, can lead to innovation rejection.

Impact of data breach locality and error management on attitude and engagement

Given the growing number of credit card transactions, data breaches have become an increasingly serious concern for hotel businesses. Even when a rival hotel experiences a data breach, customers of the focal hotel may feel vulnerable as well. Nevertheless, firms have little insight into the potential impacts of a data breach on customers and the corresponding recovery strategies. For this study, the joint effect of data breach locality (i.e., focal hotel vs. rival hotel) and error management (i.e., no vs. low vs. high EM) on customers’ attitudes toward the focal hotel and engagement behaviors (i.e., intentions to spread positive WOM and negative WOM) was examined. A 2 × 3 scenario-based experiment was conducted. The results of the MANCOVA analysis suggest that when a rival hotel is breached, low error management is more effective. Interestingly, when the focal hotel is breached, high error management and low error management are equally effective.