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Customer deviance: A framework, prevention strategies, and opportunities for future research
Abstract
The phrase the “customer is always right” assumes that customers provide universal benefits for firms. However, in recent years, customer deviance is on the rise and the academic literature has provided little insight into the drivers of deviance, the actual behaviors, and strategies for how managers can better manage a customer base that cannot be classified as universally benign. This article addresses customer deviance ranging from classic examples like shoplifting to engaging in hostile to anti-brand behaviors on social media or even breaking established norms such as trespassing in stores after closing hours. In an effort to spur new research into customer deviance, we propose a customer deviance framework encompassing the triggers, behaviors, and consequences of customer deviance with attention given to differentiating firms, employees, and other customers as the possible targets of deviant behaviors. We outline prevention strategies that comprise social, design, and technological-oriented factors, which in turn can help firms better manage deviant behavior. In doing so, we identify gaps in the literature and close with an actionable agenda for future research that can help firms curtail these negative customer behaviors.
... Since then, negatively deviating customers have been on the rise (Mayr and Teller, 2023) and are damaging retailers. Not only that, such behaviours threaten bystander-customers' wellbeing (Gryb� s-Kabocik, 2016) and their shopping experience (Fombelle et al., 2020), driving them out of stores. Not surprisingly, bystander-customers switch services due to toxic clients (Cai et al., 2018). ...
... Our research contributes theoretically to reactance theory (Brehm and Brehm, 1981) as we display the application of this theory in the context of NCD. Our findings reveal that bystander-customers exposed to NCD (Fombelle et al., 2020;Mayr et al., 2022) while shopping in stores correspond with their switching retail channel behaviour (Jebarajakirthy et al., 2021) by shopping online instead, which is crucial for store based retailers. We expand on channelswitching research by highlighting its correspondence to non-cognitive dimensions (NCD perceptions) and emotional factors. ...
... We significantly advance research on customer deviance by shedding light on the impact of different NCD dimensions on bystander-customers -findings that have been overlooked in previous research (Fombelle et al., 2020;Mayr and Teller, 2023). We expand this research area as we test NCD effects in a retail context contrary to prior research which centres around service marketing. ...
Purpose
Unacceptable behaviour in retailing – negative customer deviance (NCD) is rising, damaging retailers financially. Current research investigates forms of NCD by addressing its impact on employees but overlooks its effects on bystander-customers and their retail channel preferences. As channel switching within retailing is increasing unprecedentedly, this research investigates its correspondence with NCD encounters.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses structural equation modelling, based on data collection administered through a web-based survey of 1,008 customers of at least 16 years of age, to analyse the research model.
Findings
The findings reveal unexplored forms of NCD perceived by bystander-customers in retailing and their consequences, linking it to bystander-customers' ill-being, dissatisfaction with the shopping experience, a decrease in store commitment and an increase in their retail channel-switching intentions. Additionally, the research uncovers moderating variables.
Practical implications
This research tests NCD dimensions and effects on bystander-customers, which indicate the need for retailers to address shopping values, attitudes and commitment through corrective, proactive and long-term strategic actions.
Originality/value
As one of the first studies to investigate the impact of NCD on bystander-customers' intentions to switch from store-based to online shopping, strategies for retailers are developed to help diminish and control NCD-induced threats to bystander-customers.
... On-site supervision has also been suggested, though not empirically tested, to impact why misbehavior occurs in the sharing economy (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012), but it is not clear whether and how such supervision-be it formally carried out by FLEs or informally by peer providers-impacts these mechanisms. Understanding these contagion mechanisms and related boundary conditions is, therefore, critical for two main reasons: 1) for designing effective countermeasures to curb contagion and 2) for preventing such behavior in the first place (Fombelle et al., 2020), because appropriate strategies fundamentally hinge on the specific mechanisms at play. Thus, this paper aims to answer the following two questions: ...
... Third, this research is the first to provide empirical evidence for the effectiveness of anti-misbehavior measures that platform and peer providers can readily employ to curb contagion. In doing so, our study advances the limited conceptual (Fombelle et al., 2020) and empirical work in this area (Danatzis & Möller-Herm, 2023;Schaefers et al., 2016), thus addressing calls to consider potential drawbacks or the "dark side" of sharing economy markets (Eckhardt et al., 2019). ...
... Such C2C misbehavior is nothing new, it regularly occurs across industries (e.g., Griffiths & Gilly, 2012;Grove, Pickett, Jones, & Dorsch, 2012;Shen et al., 2020), and has been shown to spread to other customers (see supplementary Table A1 for an overview of empirical research on C2C misbehavior contagion). The rise of the sharing economy, however, exacerbates C2C misbehavior by providing customers with more avenues to target each other with varying degrees of severity (Fombelle et al., 2020). ...
... These examples illustrate that customer misbehavior is a serious problem causing harm to at least one of the stakeholders involved: other customers of the service provider, or the service provider with its assets and employees (e.g., Fisk et al., 2010;Fombelle et al., 2020). Customer misbehavior is particularly problematic for (mobility) services that are used independently by the customer (i.e., without the presence or involvement of service personnel). ...
... Therefore, it is of pivotal importance to reduce misconduct, especially in access-based contexts where the interventions of service personnel are mostly not possible. Instead, self-service contexts, such as car sharing or public transport, have to rely on regulatory strategies, such as measures that motivate self-regulation (Dootson et al., 2018) or installation of surveillance instruments (Fombelle et al., 2020;Jayawickrama et al., 2022). However, the literature on dealing with customer misconduct focuses mainly on staff as prevention agents (Echeverri et al., 2012;Huang et al., 2022;Salomonson & Fellesson, 2014). ...
... In addition, conceptual research considers different contexts, and therefore has a more general focus (e.g., Dootson et al., 2018;Fisk et al., 2010;Fombelle et al., 2020;Fullerton & Punj, 1997). Fullerton and Punj (1997) identified education and deterrence as two major strategies against misbehavior. ...
Customer misbehavior in access-based mobility services such as car sharing and public transport deteriorates the quality and profitability of business models. Basing on organismic integration theory, we propose that service providers can use external regulation or implement introjected actions to reduce customer misbehavior. In two mobility contexts differing in terms of their anonymity dimensions, we test the proposed effects of these two prevention strategies. An 2 × 2 × 2 online experiment with users of public transport (high personal anonymity) and car sharing (high interpersonal anonymity) shows that introjective actions (i.e., normative appeals) and external regulation (i.e., surveillance) are associated with intended consequences regarding misbehavior and motivation to co-create, but also imply unintended consequences (e.g., privacy concerns, negative word-of-mouth, and reduced usage intention). The combined use of both strategies usually proves not to be advantageous, so that the provider actions should be carefully selected depending on the given service setting.
... Far from being an inconsequential phenomenon, consumer misbehaviours can have negative value outcomes for those misbehaving, as well as other participants in the SE (Pl e and Demangeot, 2020). Such misbehaviours represent a considerable financial, psychological and physical cost to organisations, their employees and other customers (Fombelle et al., 2019;Harris and Reynolds, 2003). Although Fisk et al. (2010) claimed that there are also positive consequences of misbehaviour, such as increased job opportunities and fostering a positive self-image among consumers who observe but do not engage in misbehaviours, the general consensus is that the consequences of the problematic behaviours can be quite daunting, transferring into reduced profit margins for firms and EJM higher prices for consumers (Harris, 2008), negative consumer experiences (Fullerton and Punj, 1993) and reduced morale and motivation among frontline employees (Harris and Reynolds, 2003). ...
... Prior research predominantly classifies misbehaviours in terms of the nature of the act or the targets of misbehaviours (Fombelle et al., 2019;Greer, 2015). Early typologies, mostly conceptual in spirit, are particularly concerned with categorising misbehaviours based on the nature of the act. ...
... This classification is insightful, yet still needs to be empirically verified. On the other hand, Fombelle et al. (2019) followed the logic of the three targets (i.e. company, employee and customer) with the goal of identifying prevention strategies. In the context of tourism and group travel, Tsaur et al. ...
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the types of user misbehaviours in the sharing economy (SE) context. SE offers a fruitful study setting due to the scope of potential misbehaviour and the expanded role of consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
The study drew on online archival data from the AirbnbHell.com website, where people share their stories about their Airbnb-related negative experiences. The authors reviewed 405 hosts’, guests’ and neighbours’ stories and coded the identified forms of misbehaviours into categories. The typology thus developed was validated in the context of the Uber Rides service.
Findings
User misbehaviours in the SE context can be distinguished based on the domain in which the user role is violated and the nature of violated norms. These two conceptual distinctions delineate a four-fold typology of user misbehaviours: illegal, unprofessional, unbefitting and uncivil behaviours.
Research limitations/implications
The trustworthiness of the stories could not be assessed.
Practical implications
The presented typology can be used as a mapping tool that facilitates detection of the full scope of misbehaviours and as a managerial tool that provides ideas for effective management of misbehaviours that correspond to each category.
Originality/value
The paper presents the first empirically derived comprehensive typology of user misbehaviours in SE settings. This typology enables classification of a broad set of misbehaviours, including previously overlooked unprofessional behaviours carried out by peer-service providers. The study also puts forward a revised definition of consumer misbehaviours that encompasses the impact of misbehaviours on parties not directly involved in the SE-mediated exchange.
... So far, research on NCD has examined either triggers, targets, consequences or managerial preventive strategies (Reynolds and Harris, 2009;Dootson et al., 2018;Fombelle et al., 2020), leaving its impacts on employees' wellbeing, including their job satisfaction and their intention to leave, uncovered. Moreover, effective managerial strategies for containing the effects of NCD on employees fail (Gaucher and Chebat, 2019;Reynolds and Harris, 2006) as research targets only a few dimensions of NCD, such as fraudulent returns (Zhang et al., 2023). ...
... NCD research in retailing corroborates the socially norm deviating characteristics of such behaviours and the targets of NCD in retail (Fombelle et al., 2020;Lugosi, 2019) referred to other customers, frontline employees and store assets. Based on this, NCD is defined as any observable customer behaviour perceived by an employee within store-based retailing that deviates from a commonly accepted social norm (non-law-breaking), in interaction with either another customer, the employee or the environment, such as assets of the store. ...
... The job-related affective ill-being and the retail industry as a research field for customer deviance was left behind in research so far, making it difficult for retailers to effectively support their employees when facing such deviating customers. Therefore, this research investigates the direct effects of NCD in relation to customers and employees as targets (Fombelle et al., 2020) of such behaviours, by targeting emotional exhaustion (H1). ...
Retail employees are increasingly under pressure as they are confronted with the dark side of customer behaviour: Customer deviance (NCD). Consequently, retailers face difficulties retaining employees in the job leading to workforce shortage in the industry as more and more retail workers leave their jobs. While some academic research displays the impact of NCD in retail, it leaves its effects on employees, their intentions to leave the job, including the mitigating factor of managerial support structures unexplored. Applying the job demands-resources model, this research fills this gap by investigating NCD in store-based retail, by identifying a series of employees' responses in correspondence with such behaviours and by revealing various support factors as moderators of NCD's effects on employees. Structural equation modelling of data obtained from surveying 108 retail employees in stores confirms the mediation of emotional exhaustion, affective ill-being and job (dis-)satisfaction, in the context of employees facing NCD and their leaving intention. The research raises awareness for emotional care in the form of managerial strategies targeting emotions, the supervisor's role and trust-enhancing mechanisms in retail care management, in order to attenuate NCD's negative effects on retail employees.
... On the other hand, negative CCI is associated with deviant behaviour. According to Fombelle et al. (2019), customer deviance can be defined as "any act by a customer in an online or offline environment that deprives the firm, its employees, or other customers of resources, safety, image, or an otherwise successful experience". Other customers can be the target of such deviant behaviours. ...
... Quality management cannot ignore the importance of addressing CCI, since, as it happens with many other service failures, customers tend to blame the firm/the service provider for the unsuccessful experience that results from deviant behaviours of fellow customers (Fombelle et al., 2019). As stressed before, CCI represents an additional source of variability, inconsistency and complexity that affects service performance. ...
... Therefore, when designing the service seting, quality management needs to consider such elements, finding an adequate balance among efficiency, comfort and adaptability. Some studies have revealed that employees eye contact with customers, by showing attention and recognition, have an impact on discouraging stealing (Fombelle et al., 2019) and the same probably applies to preventing negative CCI. ...
It is widely recognized that the presence of other customers is an important social component of the servicescape with an impact on the quality of services provided and, in particularly, on customer experiences Therefore, increasing attention has been paid to customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) by management literature, both by marketing and by operations management scholars.
As stressed in previous literature, there are several types of CCI, each of them posing different opportunities and challenges to service providers. Digital transformation has also been contributing to the emergence of new forms of CCI through online platforms and other social media channels.
The diversity of CCI forms has recently led to the development of CCI typologies (and taxonomies. Yet, the implications of CCI on the systems and tools typically used to manage quality in service operations, highly focused on the reduction of variability and unpredictability, are still under-researched.
Based on a review of the literature on CCI and on a critical analysis of some scenarios, this paper identifies the main strategies and tools that have been used to either foster value creation through CCI or to mitigate their negative consequences, giving a particular attention to transport services. From a services operations perspective, and more specifically from a quality management point of view, some recommendations are derived on how to better deal with this additional source of variability, inconsistency and complexity.
... Indeed, scholars have been investing significant efforts to deepdive into specific concepts. Examples of such work include systematic literature reviews of customer incivility (Lee & Kim, 2022), of customers behaving badly (Fisk et al., 2010), and of customer deviance (Fombelle et al., 2020). However, to the best of our knowledge, no systematic effort has been invested in understanding the broader area of the dark side of customer behavior, aimed at identifying the focal concept in this area. ...
... Research on customer incivility has been gaining momentum in the last decade (Fisk et al., 2010;Fombelle et al., 2020;Lee & Kim, 2022). ...
... It is interesting to note that although interest in the dark side of customer and consumer behavior began early, in 1976, the expansion of the field has occurred only in the last five years. This is consistent with our knowledge of the dark side of customer and consumer behavior, which states that concepts such as consumer incivility, misbehavior etc. are a relatively new phenomenon that has only recently begun to receive more research attention (Fombelle et al., 2020). ...
The dark side of customer behavior has been receiving increasing attention in the business and management literature in recent years. Scholars have used various terminologies to study those customer behaviors that disrupt service delivery, affect organizational performance, and impact on employees' well-being. In this study, through a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis of 246 academic articles, we identify three clusters within the dark side of customer behavior literature: (1) customer dysfunctional behavior; (2) customer revenge and rage as forms of customer misbehavior; and (3) customer mistreatment and incivility-related clusters. Based on these three identified clusters of the literature, we propose an integrative framework of customer incivility as customer incivility is the current centerpiece of the literature on the dark side of customer behavior. In doing so, we identify various research gaps and suggest effective avenues for future works in this research stream.
... While we consider this literature more extensively in our conceptual development section, in sum, we found that despite some work analyzing CDB from the employees' viewpoint (Frey-Cordes, Eilert, and Büttgen 2020;Fombelle et al. 2020), limited research has systematically explored guardianship policies and associated employee perceptions (e.g., Potdar F o r P e e r R e v i e w 6 and colleagues). Extant studies generally use a single methodology with limited use (e.g., Frey-Cordes, Eilert, and Büttgen 2020;Habel, Alavi and Pick 2017;Hershcovis and Bhatnagar 2017) of multi-of method approaches necessary to best understand this wide-ranging phenomenon. ...
... However, as firms' dedicated loss prevention budgets continue to shrink, this policing role in theft prevention has shifted to employees who are now performing duties outside the purview of their traditional roles (Bhattarai 2020). In all, extant research on CDB tends to focus on customers (e.g., Leischnig and Woodside 2019), social or servicescape design strategies firms can use to reduce CDB (e.g., Fombelle et al. 2020), or on how employees might be utilized for mitigating CDB (e.g., Potdar, Garry, Guthrie, and Gnoth 2020). Thus, no works explicitly consider the impact of CDB guardianship policies on employees. ...
... Both employees and customers are increasingly apprehensive about this retail environment, which frames the landscape facing firms and highlights recent research calls for greater understanding of how dynamic service environments impact frontlines. Our work responds to these calls, including requests to identify contextual factors of policy impacts (Northington et al. 2021), changing employee roles in routine service encounters (Voorhees, Fombelle, and Bone 2020;Fombelle et al. 2020), and how firms require FLEs to cope with structural and managerial changes Potdar et al. 2021). ...
Recent disruptions, labor shortages, and fiscal pressures, especially in retail service environments, have necessitated and highlighted changes in the roles and responsibilities of frontline employees, often requiring them to enforce mask mandates and police customer deviant behavior (CDB). While extant work has investigated the impact of policing, or guardianship, for customers and firms, there has been limited examination regarding the policies themselves and the corresponding toll exacted upon frontline employees (FLEs) and their managers (FLMs). Thus, this phenomenon warranted an in-depth, multi-method investigation, including a full-scale qualitative exploration substantiated and extended via three experiments and a survey. The qualitative approach probes employees’ feelings about and identifies categories of CDB in retail service settings as well as develops a novel typology of guardianship policies (policy type x approach style). The subsequent studies empirically test the CDB guardianship typology in the context of a particularly detrimental type of CDB—shoplifting, while advancing understanding of firm-related (guardianship expectations), employee-related (trait anxiety) and job role-related (FLE vs FLM) contextual factors impacting perceptions of policy fairness and turnover intentions. The findings provide rich insights for practitioners and scholars by offering a novel guardianship typology and an extensive agenda for future research.
... Moreover, although the literature on consumer misbehavior has devoted significant attention to ethical judgment and its antecedents (Hassan et al., 2022), there is a lack of studies that link ethical judgment to trust, even though this has been put forward as the key concept in the sharing economy literature (see ter Huurne et al., 2017). Calls have thus been made for researchers to pay particular attention to sharing economy users' reactions and perceptions when it comes to trust in others (Parente et al., 2018), which could help develop strategies to better understand and manage consumer misbehavior (Fombelle et al., 2020). ...
... An interesting and extensive stream of research has developed that offers insights into consumers' own (un)ethical beliefs and behaviors (see Fombelle et al., 2020;Vitell, 2003). However, despite its relevance to the present study, far less research has been conducted on problematic consumer behavior from the perspective of the target, with scholars focusing primarily on employees (e.g., Harris & Reynolds, 2003). ...
... Deviant consumer behavior is by no means a new phenomenon, as scholars have extensively studied the "dark side" of consumer misbehavior in both the consumer behavior literature (e.g., Fombelle et al., 2020;Vitell, 2003) and the business-to-business literature (e.g., Abosag et al., 2016). Following the emergence of the sharing economy, a shift from dyadic to triadic relationship formation and dynamics has begun to take place, which suggests that a reexamination of the constructs that affect ethical evaluations within the sharing economy context may be needed in order to adequately consider the relationships and potential conflicts among the different actors involved. ...
The complex triadic relationships among consumers, providers, and platforms in the sharing economy have led to increasing conflicts in the interactions between the actors involved, especially when it comes to unethical behavior, such as rule breaking by consumers. This paper examines consumer misbehavior from the perspective of their peers, i.e., service providers. In two studies (an experiment and a survey, combined N = 452), we observe a significant positive effect of ethical climate and a significant negative effect of trust in consumers on providers' strictness of ethical judgments of consumer misbehavior and through this on negative word of mouth. Further, the survey results show that the relationship between the strictness of ethical judgments and negative word of mouth is only significant for providers with low or medium levels of trust in the platform. The results highlight the importance of regulating consumer misbehavior in the sharing economy.
... Theoretically, this research extends prior work on C2C misbehavior (e.g., Fisk et al. 2010;Fullerton and Punj 2004) and its contagion effect (Fombelle et al. 2020;Schaefers et al. 2016;Shen et al. 2020;Su et al. 2022) by specifying whether, how, and why C2C misbehavior spreads when FLE supervision is present. Specifically, it is the first to provide experimental evidence that FLE-directed blame attributions mediate C2C misbehavior contagion while ruling out rival contagion mechanisms. ...
... Fullerton andPunj (2004, p.1239) define customer misbehavior as "behavioral acts by consumers, which violate the generally accepted norms of conduct in consumption situations." Individuals exhibiting such behavior are also often referred to as dysfunctional customers (Gong, Yi, and Choi 2014;Harris and Reynolds 2003), deviant customers (Fombelle et al. 2020), or problem customers (Bitner, Booms, and Mohr 1994). ...
... Fourth, our findings show what FLEs can do to curb C2C misbehavior contagion by targeting the perpetrator. Extending limited research in this area (e.g., Fombelle et al. 2020;Habel, Alavi, and Pick 2017;Henkel et al. 2017), findings from Study 3 indicate that FLEs' disapproving looks are not enough to reduce contagion. Instead, Study 2 findings show that personalized as compared to general loudspeaker announcements are not only more effective at reducing FLE-directed blame attributions (and thus contagion) but also at reversing the spread of C2C misbehavior. ...
Service encounters nowadays are increasingly characterized by customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions where customers regularly become targets of other customers' misbehavior. Although previous research provides initial evidence of the conta-giousness of such C2C misbehavior, it remains unclear whether, how, and why C2C misbehavior spreads when frontline employees (FLEs) are involved and what FLEs can do to curb it. Two online and one field experiment in the context of co-working and transportation services reveal that FLE-directed blame attributions drive the spread of C2C misbehavior while perpetrator-directed blame attributions reverse it. These blame attributions are greater the more severely customers judge other customers' misbehavior. Findings further rule out alternative contagion mechanisms (social norms and emotional contagion) and show that contagion spills over to C2C misbehavior unrelated to the initial transgression. By specifying how contagion unfolds and by explicating the central role blame attributions play in C2C misbehavior contagion, this research uncovers its social dynamics, thus extending existing theory on customer misbehavior and attribution theory in multi-actor settings. Managerially, this research provides FLEs with explicit guidance on what they should do (personalized FLE interventions delivered either in person or remotely) and avoid doing (disapproving looks, FLE service recovery) when faced with C2C misbehavior.
... The chapter concludes with addressing the Literature Review: A Historical Overview of Incivility Research Consumer incivility and its forms have originally been researched in offline, in-person service contexts whereby consumers intentionally or unintentionally, overtly or covertly, disrupt otherwise functional service encounters (Harris & Reynolds, 2003, 2004. Examples of prominent in-person uncivil consumer behaviors investigated in past research refer to shoplifting, verbal abuse, and vandalism among others (Fombelle et al., 2020). Such misbehaviors are suggested to originate in elements pertinent to the service environment (e.g., impulse versus planned), are directed at other consumers or frontline employees, and are motivated by situational inhibitors in the service provision, personality traits, and (non-)/economic factors (for a review see Fisk et al., 2010). ...
... In more recent years, however, anti-brand activism has started to take the form of antibrand communities based on SMNs (Popp et al., 2016). In their conceptual framework of customer deviance, Fombelle et al. (2020) identified online anti-brand communities as a prominent uncivil online behavior increasingly adopted by consumers as a consequence of the interactive and empowering nature of social media. In other words, consumers who feel empowered establish anti-brand collectives that criticize, parody, and expose the actions and intentions of brands (Fournier & Avery, 2011). ...
... Three broad theoretical implications can be drawn from existing research into consumer incivility on SMNs discussed here that inform future avenues for interactive marketing research and practice. First, the topic of consumer incivility has thus far received some attention by several research disciplines that have focused on conceptualizing the wide range of uncivil behaviors taking place on SMNs together with tentatively understanding their antecedents and consequences (e.g., Chandrasapth et al., 2021;Fombelle et al., 2020). Notwithstanding these contributions, marketing research into uncivil consumer interactions and behaviors remains incomplete and disjointed. ...
... Although more scholars have focused on the consequences and prevention strategies of dysfunctional customer behavior, few scholars have noticed the antecedents of dysfunctional customer behavior (Garnefeld et al., 2019;Guan et al., 2022;Seger-Guttmann et al., 2018). Fombelle et al. (2020) argue that dysfunctional customer behavior could be triggered through "firm influence (firm-initiated), other customers ([other customers]-initiated), or … the customer's own psychological state … ([focal] customer-initiated)" (p. 388). ...
... Regarding focal customer-initiated triggers, scholars report that personality traits are the source of dysfunctional customer behavior (Fombelle et al., 2020;Seger-Guttmann, 2019). Reynolds and Harris (2009) suggest that individual facets of psychological obstructionism, such as Machiavellianism, aggressiveness, sensation seeking, and consumer alienation, are significant drivers of dysfunctional customer behavior. ...
... The findings could differ depending on the subdimensions of customer citizenship behavior and dysfunctional customer behavior. Our focus on dysfunctional customer behavior manifesting in the form of verbal aggression could be a limitation of our study because we did not measure other types of dysfunctional customer behavior (e.g., wardrobing, shoplifting, vandalism, physical/sexual assault, piracy, and cheating on service guarantees) (Fisk et al., 2010;Fombelle et al., 2020), which may limit the generalizability of our findings. ...
Purpose – While the positive effects of customer citizenship behavior are well established, research on its potential negative consequences is scarce. This study aims to examine the indirect relationship between customer citizenship and dysfunctional customers via customer moral credits and entitlement, as well as the moderating influence of customer citizenship fatigue.
Design/methodology/approach – Study 1 employed a cross-sectional design with a self-administered survey. The data were collected from 314 customers using an online research panel. In Study 2, the authors manipulated customer citizenship behavior using 203 participants to establish causality and rule out
alternative explanations of the findings of Study 1. In Study 3, the authors replicated Study 2 and enhanced internal validity by using a more controlled experimental design using 128 participants.
Findings – This study shows that when customer citizenship fatigue is high, customer citizenship behavior elicits customer moral credit, which leads to customer entitlement and, in turn, promotes dysfunctional customer behavior. Conversely, when customer citizenship fatigue is low, customer citizenship behavior does not generate moral credit or entitlement, preventing dysfunctional customer behavior.
Practical implications – The study shows that promoting customer citizenship behavior does not always lead to positive outcomes. Therefore, when promoting customer citizenship behavior, managers should consider the psychological licensing process and ways to mitigate the influence of moral credits.
Originality/value – This study challenges common wisdom and investigates the dark side of customer citizenship behavior. Specifically, it demonstrates that customer citizenship behavior could backfire (e.g. dysfunctional customer behavior). It also shows that only customers who experience a high level of
fatigue from their citizenship behaviors are psychologically licensed to gain moral credit, leading to dysfunctional customer behavior.
... Complaint incivility refers to all forms of rude, disrespectful, condescending, or degrading complaints made by customers about a firm or an employee (Bacile et al. 2018;Henkel et al. 2017). The phenomenon of customer incivility is on the rise on social media because of the anonymity associated with such online environments (Fombelle et al. 2020). In a recent survey, 73% of observers reported having witnessed incivility on social media, and these individuals admitted to being affected by such actions (Pew Research Center 2014). ...
... In a recent survey, 73% of observers reported having witnessed incivility on social media, and these individuals admitted to being affected by such actions (Pew Research Center 2014). This phenomenon raises the critical question of how companies should manage incivility on social media, an issue that has been identified as an important research avenue in recent calls (Bacile 2020;Bacile et al. 2018;Fombelle et al. 2020). We address such calls and posit that humor is an appropriate and effective tactic to address complainers' incivility on social media. ...
... First, the research contributes to the recent literature on customers' incivility (Fombelle et al. 2020;Henkel et al. 2017) in the social media context (Bacile et al. 2018;Batista et al. 2022;Wolter, Bacile, and Xu 2022). Precisely, our research identifies humor as a relevant strategy to address uncivil comments posted on social media. ...
This research investigates whether companies’ use of humor is an effective strategy to address complainers’ incivility on social media. Using three main experiments, the authors examine observers’ evaluation of companies’ humorous responses on social media in relation to the degree of incivility of the complaints. The authors find, first, that observers develop greater purchase intentions toward companies that use humor to respond to uncivil complaints. Drawing on benign violation theory, they explain that observers are less committed to uncivil complainers, which makes the use of humor more benign and thus more amusing. Second, they compare the effectiveness of humor with an accommodative recovery (e.g., apologies). When the complaint is civil, an accommodative recovery is a more effective strategy than affiliative humor. However, when the complaint is uncivil, affiliative humor is more interesting than an accommodative recovery because of greater engagement with the post (i.e., likes and shares) and similar purchase intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results are then discussed.
... Currently, extensive research in the hospitality and tourism context has investigated how to use social factors (e.g., other customers' descriptive normative messages; Bohner & Schlüter, 2014;Goldstein et al., 2008;Schultz et al., 2008) and design factors (e.g., layout, atmosphere and physical environment; Fombelle et al., 2020;Taheri et al., 2019) to curb DTB. In addition, one particular research stream has focused on the inhibitory effect of social identity on DTB, where several studies have confirmed that interactive nature (e.g., interaction with other groups; Yang et al., 2020;Zhang et al., 2019) and interdependent nature (e.g., strength of national identification; Qu et al., 2021) of a social identity plays an important role in DTB. ...
... DTB refers to any destructive acts undertaken by tourists toward a destination, host firm or its employee, or other tourists (Fombelle et al., 2020), including spitting, littering, damaging property, cutting in queues, and painting graffiti (Fisk et al., 2010;Lee et al., 2018). Existing studies also use other terms to describe tourist or customer deviance, such as tourist incivility (Akgunduz & Eser, 2022), tourist misbehavior (Tsaur et al., 2019;Wan et al., 2021), customer dysfunctional behavior (Daunt & Harris, 2012;Reynolds & Harris, 2009) and jay-customer behavior (Harris & Reynolds, 2004;Kim et al., 2014). ...
... Taheri et al. (2019) noted that a good servicescape (e.g., layout) has a negative effect on DTB intention at airports. An integrated framework of customer deviance proposed by Fombelle et al. (2020) suggests that social norms (e.g., injunctive normative messages ;Cialdini et al., 2006), service designs (e.g., servicescapes; Taheri et al., 2019;convenience;Aguiar & Waldfogel, 2015) and technology utilization (e. g., closed-circuit television; Hayes & Downs, 2011) are three strategies that prevent or reduce customer deviance. Recently, several researchers have recognized the impact of tourist social identity on deviant tourist behavior and found that tourists' interactions with other groups (e.g., Yang et al., 2020;Zhang et al., 2019) and national identity strength (e.g., Qu et al., 2021) play an inhibitory role in DTB. ...
Deviant tourist behavior (DTB) among Chinese outbound tourists has sparked concerns that such behavior not only exposes destinations to various negative impacts but also damages the international image of China. Hence, it is necessary to explore how to reduce such behavior. Social identity cues are an effective inhibitor of DTB; however, previous research has focused on the influence of the interdependent and interactive nature of social identities on DTB, neglecting the inclusive nature of social identities. To fill this gap, the current study focuses on how Chinese outbound tourists’ identity breadth affects their deviant behavior in international tourism contexts. In Study 1, we examine a distinctive feature of international tourism contexts and find that tourists have high face consciousness. Second, we propose and document that Chinese outbound tourists primed with a broad (vs. narrow) identity develop higher face consciousness and a lower intention to engage in deviant behavior (Studies 1 and 2), with face consciousness mediating this process (Study 3). Finally, Study 4 finds that the number of fellow tourists with the same identity moderates this effect. The influence of identity breadth on DTB is manifest when there are few in-group members present. Our findings provide meaningful practical and theoretical value regarding how to reduce tourists’ deviant behavior through identity-related cues.
... Customer aggression can place significant strain on delivery drivers, as they must perform the emotional labor of regulating their emotions and maintaining their composure in the face of a high-stress interaction. Studies have found that, in response to customer aggression and driving stress, workers may adopt a range of coping strategies, including problem solving, escaping or avoiding, driving aggressively, and support-seeking (Yagil, 2008;Montoro et al., 2018;Fombelle et al., 2020). Negative strategies, such as aggressive driving, associated with driving anger, are more likely to lead to negative outcomes, including poor health and work safety Useche et al., 2018), while prevention strategies increased likelihood of positive outcomes (Fombelle et al., 2020). ...
... Studies have found that, in response to customer aggression and driving stress, workers may adopt a range of coping strategies, including problem solving, escaping or avoiding, driving aggressively, and support-seeking (Yagil, 2008;Montoro et al., 2018;Fombelle et al., 2020). Negative strategies, such as aggressive driving, associated with driving anger, are more likely to lead to negative outcomes, including poor health and work safety Useche et al., 2018), while prevention strategies increased likelihood of positive outcomes (Fombelle et al., 2020). Thus, it is imperative that companies provide support to their drivers, setting realistic expectations for drivers and customers alike. ...
... A mindful state can, in turn, allow individuals to make informed decisions about how to cope with a given situation. For example, a delivery driver with high mindfulness may be able make the choice to engage in problem solving or to seek support following an experience with customer aggression (Yagil, 2008;Fombelle et al., 2020). By contrast, if an individual becomes too overwhelmed with reactionary thoughts and feelings, they may behave in accordance, which can place them in unsafe situations (e.g., motor vehicle accidents) and/or lead them to receive disciplinary action (e.g., getting fired or receiving traffic sanctions). ...
The food and package delivery workforce in China has grown substantially in the past decade. However, delivery drivers face volatile and stressful work conditions, which can give rise to high turnover and burnout. Past research has indicated that job demands and resources (JD-R) significantly predict burnout. Scholars have also found evidence that mindfulness may be a protective factor against negative outcomes like burnout. Using data collected from 240 food and package delivery drivers in Beijing, China, we examined the effects of JD-R on burnout and whether these relations were moderated by mindfulness. Estimates produced by regression analyses indicated that job demands (JD) have significantly positive effects on burnout (β = 0.33), while job resources (JR) have a significant negative effect on burnout (β = −0.32). Mindfulness significantly moderated the effects of JD and JR on burnout (β = −1.64 and − 1.30, respectively). Results suggest that mindfulness is a protective factor for delivery drivers. Practice and policy implications are discussed.
... Socially unacceptable behaviour is referred to as deviance. Accordingly, customer deviant behaviour means dysfunctional acts and misbehaviour directed at banks, employees and other customers (Fombelle et al, 2020). Consequently, the research questions of the study are: How effective is implementation of the naira redesign policy? ...
... However, customers engage in several acts that violet generally accepted norms of behaviour in business sectors and the society. The behaviours that break established norms and cross ethical lines are referred to as customer deviance (Fombelle et al, 2020). Deviant behaviour consists of any anti-social acts of customers within or outside business premises, customers' online and offline abuse of activities, verbal and physical attacks leading to losses incurred by DMBs. ...
The currency redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria, introduced and enforced between 2022-2023, has generated controversies and scholarly conversations among public policy analysts and academics consequent upon the negative consequences. We draw on the frustration-aggression theory and explored the links between the currency redesign policy and deviant behaviour of customers and employees of Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) in Nigeria. In this paper, we employed online survey and selected a sample of 319 research subjects using purposive sampling and snowball sampling procedures through digital platforms and emails. We collected data with a structured questionnaire from 319 respondents, consisting of 73 employees and 246 customers of DMBs. The data are analysed with the application of t-test, regression analysis, Eta-Square and Partial Lest Squares Regression with structural equation modelling. The study demonstrated that bank employees and customers exhibited various forms of dysfunctional behaviour as responses to the pervasive cash crunch due to the currency swap policy and related sweeping challenges confronting the various sectors of the economy. We advanced recommendations and offer penetrating insights into management scholarship, business-social psychology and economic policy implications for financial institutions and monetary authorities.
... Fake retaliatory reviews are typically highly negative and can harm the targeted business's reputation, reducing the business' appeal to potential customers and lowering customer acquisition and retention. Posting fake retaliatory reviews compromises the well-being of the business and its employees (Fombelle et al. 2020). Additionally, prospective customers incur an opportunity cost when they are swayed by such reviews, potentially missing out on positive experiences with the business. ...
Business owners responding to fake retaliatory reviews—negative reviews posted with the intent to harm—sometimes use negative emotional appeals, such as evoking shame or guilt. While these strategies are used to address deviant behavior, they also carry the risk of alienating the broader consumer base. Our research examines how prospective customers respond to the use of negative emotional appeals in this context and highlights the importance of directly addressing fake reviews to protect the firm's reputation. We show that even a highly aversive emotional appeal, such as a shame appeal, can reduce the harm caused by fake retaliatory reviews when appropriately framed. Moreover, our findings suggest that the use of emotional appeals holds greater significance for businesses with lower average star ratings and shorter tenure.
... Social servicescape, customer compatibility management, and communication accommodation theory to address conflict C2C conflict, in which consumers clash within OBCs (Bacile et al., 2018), represents a key form of consumer incivility on social media (Lages et al., 2023). Unlike one-directional behaviors such as complaints targeting brands or trolling aimed at individuals, C2C conflicts involve multi-participant interactions (von Janda et al., 2021;Fombelle et al., 2020). For this reason, conventional strategies for addressing incivility, such as apologies or compensation, may not effectively resolve C2C conflicts (Ali et al., 2023;Dineva, 2023;Dineva & Daunt, 2023), and establishing appropriate moderation mechanisms to address these conflicts is of paramount importance. ...
... For instance, from the perspective of a service firm's employees, deviance is exemplified by workplace theft which can be neutralized by the argument that the damage from this theft is minor, and the firm can afford it (Alias et al. 2013). Likewise, from the viewpoint of a service firm's customers, deviance can be represented by shoplifting and the same neutralization can be used to justify its occurrence (Fombelle et al. 2020). Examples of deviant behaviour in the hospitality and foodservice context can be found in the review by Lugosi (2019) who examines it among such stakeholders as staff, suppliers, customers and externals. ...
Food waste is a major societal challenge, and hospitality and foodservice organisations make a significant contribution to its occurrence. Although research on food waste in these organisations is emerging, there remains a limited understanding of the underlying reasons behind managerial inaction on its mitigation. This mixed methods study employs neutralization theory, specifically the concept of normalization of deviance, to examine the sociological impediments of effective food waste mitigation among managers of casual dining restaurants in Bangkok, Thailand (n = 17). The findings delineate the process of how food waste can become perceived by managers as a norm and outline the factors contributing to this normalization, namely repeated personal observations of food waste generation, peer reports and media influence. By understanding the determinants of managerial disengagement with food waste mitigation, the study outlines potential interventions exemplified by the design of educational campaigns, regular food waste audits, setup of corporate goals on food waste reduction and changes to how food waste is presented in the media.
... Thus, brand activism may be viewed by some as brand advocacy while others may view the actions as polarizing with their personal beliefs. Thus, brand activism can foster loyalty and hate (Fombelle et al., 2020). To manage the adverse effects of brand activism and resulting hate, brands should present activism as an inclusive strategy that benefits society rather than their cause. ...
Purpose
This study aims to present a comprehensive review of the literature on the dark side of online brand communities, identifying the dominant themes [determinants of the dark side in online brand communities (OBCs)] in the literature and proposing ways to advance the literature in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
This study reviewed 72 scholarly articles published between 2009 and 2024 in peer-reviewed journals. A descriptive and thematic analysis of dark-side literature is presented.
Findings
The contribution of this scoping review lies in identifying the dominant themes in the literature on the determinants of the dark side of online brand communities, proposing management strategies and identifying future research directions for advancing the literature. Six main themes of the dark side of online communities were extracted: information dynamics, group dynamics, unethical practices and brand transgression, provocation and schadenfreude, brand activism and hate and disengagement.
Practical implications
Firstly, this study highlights the need for brands to engage in the active moderation of OBCs to maintain information credibility and manage information overload. Secondly, to ensure an inclusive community environment for all members, brands need to foster a balanced forum culture and moderation that discourages heterogeneity.
Originality/value
This study is unique in conducting an in-depth analysis of the literature on the dark side of online brand communities, an area that has received little attention. This review offers new insights that would help brands effectively manage negative aspects of customer behaviours in online brand communities. For managers, this review enables brands to improve their image, reputation and customer value.
... A study on customer deviance was conducted by Fombelle et al. (2020) which included consumer misbehavior such as shoplifting, participating in abusive anti-brand conduct on social media, or even breaching established standards such as trespassing in businesses after closing hours are all challenges to the security of traders. According to this study's findings, firms with considerable resources appeared to be relying on advanced technology as the default option to handle deviant behavior. ...
This study focused on the challenges faced by a group of independent and small retailers called Bul-anon retailers and identified coping mechanisms adopted. The study was conducted to investigate the coping mechanisms that can be utilized by other members of the retail industry to continue to thrive despite difficulties. Findings indicated that the challenges faced by the Bul-anon retailers revolved around three of the four primary business functions: marketing, finance/accounting, and operations. To avoid the significant impact of the above challenges, retailers adopted coping mechanisms to stay in business amidst large department stores and other businesses. How they handled their customers, being customer-oriented, was the winning mechanism for the survival of these retailers.
... Indeed, consumers' misbehaviors can have serious financial and social consequences (e.g., psychological and emotional effects, physical and behavioral impacts, and material and financial losses), and efforts to control them are an important issue for practitioners and academics alike (Grewal, Gotlieb, & Marmorstein, 1994;Harris & Reynolds, 2003). This topic is important, even more so as new forms of consumer misbehaviors emerge, such as illegal downloading (Denegri-Knott, 2006), digital software piracy (Al-Rafee & Cronan, 2006), abusive online returns (Bower & Maxham, 2012), or deviant sharing (Hou et al., 2022), and given that "online customer deviance has increased with the growth of online technologies" (Fombelle et al., 2020;p. 397). ...
... Empirical studies have found that job insecurity is associated with negative outcomes such as decreased organizational commitment and increased withdrawal behaviors, which can indirectly indicate a propensity towards negative customer interactions (Skarlicki and Folger, 1997). Additionally, job insecurity has been linked to emotional strains such as anxiety and frustration (Shoss, 2017), which may exacerbate negative behaviors towards customers as a displaced response to the stress experienced (Fombelle et al., 2020;Harris and Reynolds, 2003). ...
This research explores the interconnections among job insecurity, emotional exhaustion, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), and customer-directed deviance, framed by the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory. The study, drawing on data from 312 frontline employees in Korea, utilizes hierarchical regression to analyze these relationships. It was found that job insecurity has a significant and positive correlation with customer-directed deviance. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion plays a pivotal mediating role in this link. The study also discovers that LMX moderates the relationship between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion, as well as the indirect effect of job insecurity on customer-directed deviance, mediated by emotional exhaustion. Specifically, these relationships are less pronounced in instances of high LMX compared to low LMX. The study concludes with a discussion of its theoretical contributions and practical implications.
... The use of humor is an effective coping strategy with social stressors (Junça- Silva and Lopes, 2020;Sliter et al., 2014) and cabin crewmembers may engage in various forms of humor to tackle UPB. Empirical evidence shows that customer misbehavior seems to induce negative behaviors in others, an effect explained by the entrainment and contagious effects involved in mimicking norm-violating acts (Fisk et al., 2010;Fombelle et al., 2020;Schaefers et al., 2016). Moreover, through reciprocity and negative overcompensation, uncivil behavior tends to be mimicked and even escalated, generating an incivility spiral (Schilpzand et al., 2016). ...
Purpose
The authors present a fist attempt to test the mediating role of humor in the relation between unruly passenger behavior and occupational stress in cabin crews.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used an experience sampling design to investigate the relationship between a frequent job hassle in air service provision, namely unruly passenger behavior (UPB), and the stress experienced by flight attendants.
Findings
The results of multilevel analyses show that UPB is positively related to the use of aggressive humor and negatively related to the use of affiliative humor in cabin crews. Moreover, humor mediates the relationship between unruly passenger behavior and stress. In addition the results show that general self-efficacy as a personal resource buffers the association between passenger misconduct and the use of aggressive humor.
Originality/value
This study is among the first empirical attempts to explore the role of humor as a mediator between uncivil customer behavior and stress in air service employee.
... The most critical task in sentiment analysis is analyzing emotion during critical situations, and it is more complicated [19]. Thus the critical situation is personality through the experience of threshold trespassing and socially unknown state [20]. The main issue of the sentiment analysis is malicious activity and wrong classification [21]. ...
... Not all falsity is created by the brands, however. Managers in the metaverse need a strategy and a toolkit to tackle a plethora of falsity-related customer misbehaviors, whereby customers act in ways that deprive the company, its employees, or other customers of safety, resources, image, or an otherwise successful customer experience (Fombelle et al., 2019). Examples of misbehavior include making counterfeit synthetic replicas of physical products, using deepfakes to impersonate another avatar, an employee, or a famous person, or guiding and controlling the movement of an immersed user without their knowledge (Casey et al., 2021). ...
The metaverse has been heralded as a next frontier for fueling strategic business opportunities. At the same time, recent months have witnessed explosive volatility in the market potential of proposed metaverse offerings. As a result, businesses are struggling to set a meaningful strategic course through an uncharted and rapidly changing landscape. We argue that the success of developing and scaling the metaverse as a vibrant new business ecosystem is largely dependent on the understanding that it is a unified and immersive reality where the physical and synthetic customer experiences seamlessly converge. For this to work, businesses and their customers need to be able to suspend their disbelief that synthetic elements are inherently false. We therefore consider the metaverse as a differentiated experience by exploring the promise and perils of falsity. We discuss how businesses can strategically embrace falsity by harnessing its intended, as well as mitigating its unintended, consequences, as they maneuver through major technological challenges in capturing customer value. We offer a diverse set of examples that illustrate how these strategies translate into managerial actions to competitively succeed in this new reality.
... Our study provided evidence that customer complaints and dissatisfaction in online food delivery services may not be sourced from actual negative experiences in the hands of users with Dark Triad personality traits. Even though past research documented that online customer misbehavior is rising (Fombelle et al., 2020), and customers are becoming increasingly creative to find subversive techniques to maximize their own utilities and gain unfair advantages (Kim & Baker, 2020), the link between Dark personality traits and fraudulent behavior particularly in these platforms is unveiled by our research. ...
Customers may abuse the refund policies of online food delivery services. Given restrictions on returning online food orders and high levels of consumer power, customers who falsely claim an order was missing, damaged, or incorrect may receive both their original food order and a full refund. In an online study, we surveyed 197 food-delivery
service customers regarding their refund fraud behavior and Dark Triad personality traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy). The Dark Triad predicted fraudulent refund claims, the frequency of previously placed false refund claims, its perceived acceptability, and the likeliness of placing one in the future. Moreover, we also found evidence that individuals with high Dark Triad traits were more likely to engage in refund
fraud when the perceived cost to the food delivery company was high.
Although unfair negative customer reviews are gaining scholarly attention, research on addressing them to attract third-party customer support is in its infancy. This study assumes a social identity perspective in exploring how firms should respond to such reviews. Three experiments reveal several noteworthy findings: 1) perceived relative deprivation of third-party customers, arising from firms' responses to customer-generated unfair negative reviews, fosters support for firms; 2) group identification and empathy serially mediate this effect; and 3) emoji styles (aggressive vs. affiliative) represent a boundary condition of the impacts of perceived relative deprivation. These results enrich theories related to unfair customer reviews and emojis. This study also informs strategies to help tourism and hospitality firms manage unfair customer reviews.
Emotion recognition plays a critical role in understanding how individuals perceive and interact with the world by accurately inferring emotions from various sources, such as physical signals and physiological responses. Anomalous emotion recognition, in particular, focuses on identifying emotions that deviate significantly from expected patterns in specific contexts or individuals, including abrupt emotional shifts, inconsistencies across different emotional signals, or persistent, atypical emotional patterns. The importance of recognizing anomalous emotions has grown, particularly in intelligent systems designed for mental health monitoring and crime prevention, where early detection can enhance context-sensitive interventions. This study presents a systematic review that investigates the link between emotional variations and anomalous behaviors across diverse settings. By examining the relationship between emotional shifts and deviant behaviors, the study sheds light on the challenges of detecting emotional anomalies and assesses the efficacy of various recognition methods. A thorough analysis of 102 relevant studies highlights the potential and limitations of current approaches, emphasizing the need for more diverse datasets, improved algorithm robustness, and broader applications to enhance performance in real-world scenarios.
Purpose
This study aims to present a comprehensive review of the literature on the dark side of online brand communities, identifying the dominant themes [determinants of the dark side in online brand communities (OBCs)] in the literature and proposing ways to advance the literature in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
This study reviewed 72 scholarly articles published between 2009 and 2024 in peer-reviewed journals. A descriptive and thematic analysis of dark-side literature is presented.
Findings
The contribution of this scoping review lies in identifying the dominant themes in the literature on the determinants of the dark side of online brand communities, proposing management strategies and identifying future research directions for advancing the literature. Six main themes of the dark side of online communities were extracted: information dynamics, group dynamics, unethical practices and brand transgression, provocation and schadenfreude, brand activism and hate and disengagement.
Practical implications
Firstly, this study highlights the need for brands to engage in the active moderation of OBCs to maintain information credibility and manage information overload. Secondly, to ensure an inclusive community environment for all members, brands need to foster a balanced forum culture and moderation that discourages heterogeneity.
Originality/value
This study is unique in conducting an in-depth analysis of the literature on the dark side of online brand communities, an area that has received little attention. This review offers new insights that would help brands effectively manage negative aspects of customer behaviours in online brand communities. For managers, this review enables brands to improve their image, reputation and customer value.
This paper critically examines consumer violations of employees in the Nordic retail sector. In bringing these violations to light, we analyse how employees become subjectified by the ideals of consumer sovereignty, and how service work is discursively and practically aligned with the notion of the sovereign consumer. We demonstrate how the discourse of consumer sovereignty intersects with gendered service work and the expectations of feminine sexual availability, and how this alignment reproduces gender and power inequalities. Drawing on studies of consumer violence and misbehaviour and feminist research on service work, we argue that the patterns of subjugation and consumer abuse are intrinsically embedded both in the ideal of consumer sovereignty itself and in the strategies that employees use to constitute themselves within prevailing market and gender orders. The study provides a critical understanding of how consumer sovereignty operates in tandem with gender structures to form subjugating practices that both enable and normalise consumer violations.
Customer misbehavior poses a major risk in the sharing economy. For example, property damage to shared accommodations imposes burdens on both sharing platforms and hosts, especially if misbehaving guests purposefully, not coincidentally conceal, or fail to report damages. Such misbehavior might be facilitated by remote listing management and the lack of face-to-face interactions between hosts and guests. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of host–guest interaction modes (face-to-face, online-only) and frequency on guests’ misbehavior concealment intentions. Social identification and irritation emerged as bright- and dark side mediators, respectively. Guests who interacted face-to-face (vs. online-only) with hosts exhibited weaker intentions to conceal their misbehavior due to increased social identification. Platforms can elicit social identification by engaging guests in virtual communities. However, when face-to-face interactions become excessive, guests experience irritation and are more likely to conceal their misbehavior. These insights offer practical implications for both peer-to-peer sharing platforms and hosts.
The value co-destruction process has been heavily studied in recent years. However, most studies have focused on the value of co-destruction's emotional and behavioral consequences without considering its psychological impact on consumer behavior. This study bridges this research gap by examining consumer alienation as a fundamental psychological state that underpins the value co-destruction process. Its primary objective is to delve into the significance of alienation within retail banking, uncovering its underlying causes and consequences. Furthermore, the study examines how the external locus of control affects the behavior of alienated consumers. The data were collected from 211 French retail bank users. Structural Equation Modeling was used to test the hypotheses. The study showed that consumers’ discontent, perceived differential treatment, and financial distress lead to value destruction and influence consumer alienation toward retail banking service providers. A high level of alienation leads to payment delinquency, negative WOM, and switching intentions to internet-only banks. The external locus of control moderates these relationships. By identifying the antecedents and consequences of consumer alienation in retail banking, this study provides practical advice to retail banking providers on retroactively identifying alienated consumers. This study provides ideas on restoring lost value, retaining customers, and preventing them from switching to internet-only banks. Our research enriches the Service-Dominant Logic theory by exploring the role of consumer alienation on the value co-destruction process. It enhances the understanding of consumer alienation in retail banking.
The literature on ethics currently recommends more research on the emotional underpinnings of ethical decision-making. The current study takes up the challenge, addressing this research gap by theorising and empirically testing, through four studies (with different methodologies, e.g., survey design, lab experiment), the link between envy—malicious versus benign—and beliefs in unethical consumer behaviour as moderated by religiosity. We show that while malicious envy enhances different types of unethical consumer beliefs, this effect is dampened by the presence versus absence of religiosity (when religiosity was both measured and manipulated through thoughts of God priming). We also show that moral awareness mediates this effect. The findings contribute to theory and practice.
This research examines the antecedents and outcomes of organizational frontline employees’ (FLEs’) resilience. Developing a better understanding of resilience, defined as an employee’s ability to overcome or bounce back from adversity, has become critical, as managers increasingly are struggling to manage change on the front lines. The results from three studies conducted in organizational frontline contexts confirm the importance of FLE resilience, demonstrating its association with increased effort and reduced turnover intentions. Moreover, using an experience sampling methodology, we find that nearly half the variance in resilience lies within individuals, which suggests that resilience is not merely a trait but rather malleable. As such, the main contribution of this research is to offer fresh insights into what leads to greater resilience in customer-facing roles. The results show that rather than being motivated by a desire for monetary compensation, FLEs’ resilience is driven by a sense of competence and relatedness to not only coworkers but also customers. Moreover, we find that autonomy is negatively related to resilience when customer orientation is low. For managers, our findings offer guidance on how to cultivate resilience to improve FLE effort and reduce turnover intentions in the face of adversity.
Across three preregistered studies and five supplementary datasets, we predicted and found that conservatives were more inclined to complain than liberals due to conservative consumers feeling a greater sense of entitlement. This research contributes to the literature by introducing consumer entitlement as a novel explanation for ideological differences in consumer behavior, and by building on previous work suggesting that conservative consumers complain less than liberals (Journal of Consumer Research, 2017, 44, 477). Evidence is provided across several service contexts and types of complaining behaviors. Study 1 and 4 supplementary datasets supported the basic process. Next, theory‐relevant boundary conditions provided converging process evidence. In Study 2, complaining intentions decreased among conservatives when they felt less (vs. more) entitled than the target of social comparison. In Study 3, complaining intentions decreased among conservatives when a service recovery was framed as providing special treatment. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
This paper presents Systematic Theory Mapping (STM), a comprehensive and systematic method, as the first step toward defining and dealing with complex and wicked problems. Social systems exhibit a messy, multifaceted, and multi-level composite of problems characterized by causal complexities and non-linear interactions of numerous contributing variables. Exploring such a wicked composite of problems for causal explanations and theory building through reductionist empiricism is unrealistic, expensive, and futile. Systems thinking is required to understand the configurations driving wicked problems and navigate their causal complexities. We construed brand externalities as a wicked problem and provided an illustrative example for STM. A systematic narrative review is used to amalgamate diverse stakeholder perspectives and capture the structures and processes that generate brand externalities. System dynamics, employing a causal loop diagram, is used to organize the findings and develop a causal theory of brand externalities. The proposed method can help scholars, managers, and policymakers better define complex managerial and social problems and identify the likely consequences of their actions.
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the role of personal and affective factors in curbing unethical consumer behaviour (UCB). Specifically, this study scrutinizes how religiosity, consumer ethical beliefs (CEBs) and anticipated guilt influence UCB.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a survey-based approach, the author distributed offline and online questionnaires among students enrolled in a public university in Roorkee, India and analysed the data using structural equation modelling.
Findings
The results provide evidence that intrinsically religious individuals develop strong ethical beliefs, which can help them to refrain from unethical behaviour and adopt ethical conduct. Also, individuals prone to experiencing anticipated guilt show less inclination to commit unethical behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
This research presents significant theoretical and practical implications to facilitate academic understanding and managerial decision-making in the context of consumer ethics.
Originality/value
This research is one of the few empirical studies in the Indian context that simultaneously examines the antecedents and consequences of CEB.
Purpose
Unethically behaving customers deviating from morally acceptable norms have posed an additional challenge to retailers, frontline employees (FLEs) and other customers in recent crisis-dominant environments. While research concerning customer behaviour ethicality focusses on purchasing modes and consumption behaviour, unethicality in all its facets receives limited attention, leaving dimensions of unethical customer behaviour (UCB) and effective managerial strategies unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to describe dimensions of UCB, investigate its causes, explore its consequences for customers and FLEs and infer practical implications for retail management by collecting customers' and FLEs' views in collaboration of each other.
Design/methodology/approach
Due to the explorative nature of this research, qualitative semi-structured interviews with 45 customers and 51 FLEs were conducted, following a content analytical approach and the establishment of inter-rater reliability coefficients.
Findings
The findings reveal multiple UCB dimensions operating on situational and individual behavioural levels, targeting mainly employees, followed by customers. The reasons for UCB arising correspond to customers' attitudes, social influences and egoistic motives. UCB imposes risks of financial losses for retailers, due to the wasting of resources as a consequence of employees' stress and emotional exhaustion, demanding managerial boundary-spanning activities. Further, it negatively impacts customers' shopping behaviours, provoking online shopping and shopping avoidance.
Originality/value
The study fills the research gap regarding perceived unethicality of customer behaviour by describing and explaining differing forms of UCB, considering customers' and FLEs' views in retail stores. It develops a UCB framework, identifies UCB dimensions beyond current academic research and derives specific practical implications to make the phenomenon manageable for retailers. The originality of this paper lies in the synthesis of the three UCB dimensions, consisting of antecedents, forms of UCB and consequences for customers and FLEs.
Purpose: Research into the dark side of online brand-managed communities (OBCs) and specifically, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) conflicts within this context are scarce. This paper explores the different forms of C2C conflicts in OBCs, measures their direct impact on observing consumers and brands and, investigates their appropriate moderation by exclusively focusing on two actors: brands versus consumers.
Methodology: Our research adopts a sequential exploratory approach. First, we capture different forms of C2C conflict via netnographic observations of five brand-managed communities. Second, the identified forms of C2C conflict are utilised in an online experiment to examine their impact on pertinent to OBCs social and commercial outcomes. Third, further two online experiments were employed to assess how brand versus consumer conflict moderators impact perceived credibility and conflict de-escalation.
Findings: We uncover three prominent forms of C2C conflict based on whether conflict occurs between supporters, non-supporters, or outsiders of the OBC. We further show that these affect consumers’ engagement behaviours and emotional responses, while brands suffer from diminished credibility and could be targets of unfavourable electronic word-of-mouth. Finally, for managing C2C conflict our findings confirm, brands are perceived as more suitable, while under certain conditions consumers can also be viewed as appropriate moderators.
Practical implications: Our article offers guidance to marketing practitioners on the different nuances of undesirable consumer interactions in brand-managed communities on social media, their impact on customer engagement and brand perceptions, and when/whether brands or consumers may be suited to moderating these.
Research limitations: This research used a range of participant self-selected brands and is limited to brand-managed (as opposed to consumer-managed) communities on Facebook. While beyond the scope of this paper, the dynamics for consumer-managed communities may differ.
Originality: This paper makes novel contributions to the literature on consumer (mis)behaviours and OBC management. Our findings are among the first to examine the direct social and commercial consequences of C2C conflicts and to provide comparative insights into the appropriateness of two different moderators in OBCs.
Frontline employees (FLEs) often face customer incivility—rude or demeaning remarks, verbal aggression, or hostile gestures. Although incivility from customers is rising at an alarming rate, most organizations refuse to act decisively to protect their FLEs and stop customer incivility. This research asserts that an organizational policy of ignoring and accepting incivility from customers is neither a wise business strategy nor has positive outcomes. In contrast, customer incivility should be handled promptly and decisively. Specifically, the authors present FLE Constructive Resistance (FLE CR) as a strategy to confront customer incivility. The authors conduct interviews with FLEs, develop a Constructive Resistance (CR) scale to fit the context of FLE–customer encounters, and test a conceptual model to examine the impact of CR by FLEs. The results suggest that customers who observe incivility perpetrated by fellow customers respond positively to FLE CR, including greater future purchase intention, greater positive word-of-mouth intention, and reduced future misbehavior intention. These effects are mediated by the observer’s perceived fairness of the FLE’s CR. Finally, the indirect effects of FLE’s CR on observer outcomes are more likely to manifest in customers with higher moral identity as well as newer customers.
We explore how victims of workplace sexual harassment (WSH) cope with the experiences and use social media to share their experiences. Based on the coping and empowerment literature, we propose a psychological path model that investigates WSH victim’s appraisal of and coping with the experience, using social media as an empowered outlet. We consider victim’s justice orientation, psychological capital, and social support alongside a belief in interactional empowerment through online communities. We analyzed data from 563 survey respondents and found that social media is likely to be used as a resource by victims who engage in active coping, as opposed to passive coping, and who believe in interactional empowerment through online communities. This study highlights the possibilities of social media for empowering victims of a power-laden act of WSH. We offer several practical insights to organizations for addressing and managing acts of WSH in the social media era.
Consumer fraud in online shopping has become a major problem and severe challenge for online retailers. However, detection lags behind — for academia and practice — and data-driven knowledge about risk indicators in transaction data is still very limited. Thus, this study focuses on the empirical data-based identification of consumer fraud risk indicators and combinations in online shopping transaction data. We demonstrate the use of a decision tree as a data mining technique for analysis of data from one of the world’s largest online retailers. Thereby, several patterns of fraud that improve separation of online shopping transactions into fraudulent and legitimate cases are identified. Thus, results can guide the choice of variables and design of fraud prevention actions and systems in future practical and theoretical work.
Marketers have long utilized online brand communities to generate desirable user engagement behaviors. However, the rise of online brand communities has brought together millions of heterogenous users with diverse engagement motives, leading to the recent notion of 'the dark side' of social media engagement i.e., online incivility. This chapter offers an overview of this phenomenon. We first outline how incivility has been conceptualized in the literature, note a lack of terminological consensus, and propose some avenues for a possible theoretical integration. Drawing on findings across research disciplines, we then discuss different perspectives on how uncivil online interactions should be managed. Lastly, we combine these findings to offer a number of practical recommendations for digital and social media marketing managers and highlight three distinct avenues for future research.
Businesses want their customers to self‐report information honestly. One increasingly popular way to stimulate desired behavior is by using nudge interventions. But can customers be nudged to self‐report information more honestly? This is currently a debate in the literature, where empirical results are inconclusive. Building on related literature on nudges, we add to this debate with a controlled field experiment (N = 5704). We used data from actual customers making real decisions when they file claims online to a large Nordic insurance provider. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effects of honesty‐nudges on self‐reported information when filing insurance claims using a controlled field experiment. We designed and tested three honesty‐nudges on insurance customers: (1) signing‐at‐the‐beginning, (2) a descriptive social norm message, and (3) a solidarity message. Across five outcome measures, we found that the honesty‐nudges, standalone or in any possible combination, do not have significant effects in reducing indicators of insurance claims fraud. But interestingly, customers in all treatment groups used significantly more characters to describe losses than customers in the control group. Also, in post hoc analyses, we found signs that the direction of nudge effects varies across customers' age and customer loyalty.
Profitability considerations lead service providers to divest from customer service contracts, either by service contract demotion (cutting back services) or service contract termination (ending service provision). Such initiatives have been associated with customer revenge. The pressing question for practitioners is which divestment approach has a stronger or weaker effect on customer revenge. Drawing on justice and appraisal theories, the authors suggest that the answer depends on customers’ predivestment satisfaction and on the provision of financial compensation or an apology. Three experiments and a critical incident study reveal that for previously satisfied customers, service termination entails a stronger effect on customer revenge, while for previously dissatisfied customers, service demotion entails a stronger effect. The findings further demonstrate that offering financial compensation or an apology can mitigate or exacerbate the effect, highlighting the need to align these divestment handling instruments with the divestment approach chosen and customers’ predivestment satisfaction. The findings also show that the effect can be explained by customer anger. Overall, the paper provides guidance on how to divest whom in order to mitigate detrimental effects.
The goal of this article is to ascertain the factors that govern consumers’ willingness to pirate a digital product, such as a digital music track. The authors assess the tendency to pirate with both indirect measures (e.g., willingness to pay for the legal alternative) and direct measures (e.g., piracy preference). Whether measured indirectly or directly, the tendency to pirate depends, to different extents, on three key factors: positive incentives (e.g., improved functionality of the legal Web site), negative incentives (e.g., perceived risk of piracy), and consumer characteristics. Based on three studies, the results suggest that negative incentives are a strong deterrent for certain consumers but can actually increase piracy tendencies for others. Conversely, positive incentives, such as improved functionality, can significantly reduce the tendency to pirate among all the consumer segments studied. The authors conclude by discussing prescriptive recommendations for the recording industry.
Previous examinations of environmental stressors in organizations have mostly emphasized their dysfunctional effects on individuals’ emotions and behaviors. Extending this work by drawing from the social functional perspective on emotion, we propose that customers’ negative emotional responses to environmental stressors in organizations can exert both dysfunctional and functional effects on customer–employee interactions. Specifically, we theorize that situational and physiological forms of environmental stressors can be dysfunctional by incurring customer anger, precipitating customer aggression, and diminishing employee helpfulness. We further theorize that situational relative to physiological stressors can exert functional effects in inducing customer fear that elicits empathy and helpfulness from employees. We test our model via an archival, observational, and critical incident yoked experimental study set in the airport context. This research contributes to stress theory and its organizational application by integrating theory from the social functional approach to emotion with appraisal‐based theories of stress in organizations.
Oppositional brand loyalty is a psychological phenomenon observed among members of a brand community who hold negative and opposing views about rival brands, and even exhibit antagonistic behaviors towards those brands. The research of oppositional brand loyalty is in its infancy and requires deeper investigation. This study employs social identity theory and consumer-brand relationship as a theoretical framework to verify the formation process of oppositional brand loyalty. Using a sample of online automobile communities in Taiwan, we collected 232 valid samples and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques. The results indicate that members who identify with their online brand community develop brand commitment and self-brand connection, which lead to oppositional brand loyalty. Furthermore, brand commitment partially mediated and self-brand connection fully mediated the relationship between brand community identification and oppositional brand loyalty. Based on these findings, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
In 3 experiments, we examined how customers react after witnessing a fellow customer mistreat an employee. Drawing on the deontic model of justice, we argue that customer mistreatment of employees leads witnesses (i.e., other customers) to leave larger tips, engage in supportive employee-directed behaviors, and evaluate employees more positively (Studies 1 and 2). We also theorize that witnesses develop less positive treatment intentions and more negative retaliatory intentions toward perpetrators, with anger and empathy acting as parallel mediators of our perpetrator- and target-directed outcomes, respectively. In Study 1, we conducted a field experiment that examined real customers' target-directed reactions to witnessed mistreatment in the context of a fast-food restaurant. In Study 2, we replicated Study 1 findings in an online vignette experiment, and extended it by examining more severe mistreatment and perpetrator-directed responses. In Study 3, we demonstrated that employees who respond to mistreatment uncivilly are significantly less likely to receive the positive outcomes found in Studies 1 and 2 than those who respond neutrally. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record
Service researchers have emphasized the importance of studying the service experience, which encompasses multiple service encounters. Although the reflection on a series of service encounters has increased, the scope of research in this space remains narrow. Service research has traditionally concentrated on understanding, measuring and optimizing the core service delivery. While this focused lens has generated extraordinary knowledge and moved service research and practice forward, it has also resulted in a narrowly focused research field. The authors present a framework to guide comprehensive service experience research. Broadly, they define (1) pre-core service encounter, (2) core service encounter, and (3) post-core service encounter as distinct periods within a service experience. Further, they review the literature and put forward important research questions to be addressed within and across these periods. Finally, they argue that researchers need to consider simultaneously all periods of the service experience to make valuable contributions to the literature.
This is an exploratory investigation into the relevancy of five micro-criminological theories to American college students' self-reported shoplifting (willful concealment) experience. A 146-item Likert-style questionnaire was voluntarily completed by non-randomly selected male and female undergraduates (N=259) at four American universities. From this sample, 166 reported having shoplifted. The survey items were inspired by Akers and Sellers' social learning theory, Sykes and Matza's techniques of neutralization, Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory, Cornish and Clarke's rational choice theory, and Cohen and Felson's routine activity theory. Through factor analysis, 12 factors were developed, two or three for each theory. The results support these theories, but only certain elements of them seemed relevant to our data. We also found that self-control theory and rational choice theory were more relevant to low frequency shoplifters (one or two times), and social learning theory and routine activities theory were more associated with higher frequency shoplifters (three and more-than-three times).
Advertisements that elicit negative emotions (e.g., guilt) have been found effective in prompting socially desirable behaviors, such as making monetary donations to charity. This study investigates whether this principle generalizes to a specific case of high-cognitiveelaboration donations: fostering a child. Results from an advertising experiment conducted with 470 respondents indicate that this is not the case. Rather, positive emotions caused stronger reactions to the advertisements, with processing motivation and preexisting attitudes playing a critical role. Implications for marketing foster care-and possibly other, similar high-cognitive-elaboration donations-include that ongoing communication and elicitation of positive emotions is essential to first form the right processing motivations and attitudes, which then more likely will lead to behavioral change on later advertising exposures. © 2016, World Advertising Research Center. All rights reserved.
Customer complaining behaviour is universal and studies relating to it have received substantial attention over recent years. Customers expect fair treatment from service providers for the effort invested in the relationship. Perceived unfairness would make customers feel as though they have been betrayed. Hence, they are likely to express their dissatisfaction through complaining. In certain cases, they might also resort to exhibiting aggressive behaviour to compensate for the unfairness they experienced. This paper proposes a conceptual framework by investigating the effect of customer's dissatisfied service experience attribution (DSEA) on aggressive complaining and its motivation in achieving fairness of treatment in a business relationship. Through a review of relevant literature on this topic, this paper attempts to conceptualise the framework of customer retaliatory complaining behaviour (CRCB). Understanding the implications could help service providers create more robust strategies to overcome negative consequences. Such an understanding is likely to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on how dissatisfaction can be dealt with effectively as empirical evidence could now be established on the importance of dealing with retaliatory behaviours in the service industry.
Purpose –
Social media has promoted anti-brand communities, which build around the shared aversion to a specific brand. The purpose of this paper is to investigate social media-based anti-brand communities and their effects on the sports team brand in question.
Design/methodology/approach –
The authors conducted a netnographic study of Facebook-based anti-brand communities that oppose a professional football team.
Findings –
The netnographic study reveals characteristics and drivers of Facebook-based anti-brand communities that oppose a professional football team. The research further identifies co-destructive behaviours of anti-brand community members that harm the sports team brand and even its sponsors. However, the findings also reveal that anti-brand communities may play a positive role in sport, as they strengthen the relationship between fans of the opposed brand and this brand and foster rivalry among football fans.
Practical implications –
This research establishes the relevance of social media-based anti-brand communities for sports brands. Recommendations are made for team sport brands with regards to how to deal with the phenomenon of anti-brand communities.
Originality/value – While the previous research on anti-brand activism focused on either offline movements or movements using traditional websites, this research is the first to investigate the pivotal role of social networking sites for anti-brand activism. The paper further uncovers unique motivational, attitudinal and behavioral patterns of fans that meet in communities opposing not only the rival team, but also the brand associated with the team. Findings show ways to better understand and deal with such anti-brand communities in sports.
The article won the award for Outstanding Paper-Journal of Product & Brand Management-in the 2017 Emerald Literati Awards. ----------- Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to investigate the nature of brand hate, its antecedents, and its outcomes.
We conduct two quantitative studies in Europe. In Study 1 we develop a measure of brand hate and test its effects on behavioral outcomes. In Study 2 we show how brand hate and its behavioral outcomes change depending on reasons for brand hate.
Brand hate is conceptualized as a constellation of negative emotions which is significantly associated with different negative behavioral outcomes, including complaining, negative WOM, protest, and patronage reduction/cessation. Reasons for brand hate related to corporate wrongdoings and violation of expectations are associated with “attack-like” and “approach-like” strategies, whereas reasons related to taste systems are associated with “avoidance-like” strategies.
Customer misbehavior in service settings is problematic for two reasons: (1) because of the direct damage it causes and (2) because of additional negative effects that arise from the contagion of such misbehavior. The authors extend existing theory of customer misbehavior by studying its contagious effect. The investigation focuses on access-based services, defined as transactions in which multiple consumers successively gain temporal, short-term access to a good, while legal ownership remains with the service provider (e.g., car sharing and fashion rentals). Due to the nature of these services, they are especially prone to indirect customer misbehavior, which is directed at the accessed product and occurs in the absence of others. Two online experiments provide the first empirical evidence for a contagiousness of misbehavior and reveal that this effect is driven by customers’ perceptions of the social norms among the customer group. Moreover, they indicate that greater strength of the accessed product’s brand as well as lower anonymity of the accessed product’s owner attenuate contagion. A field experiment shows that an increase in the communal identification among access-based service customers reverses the contagious effect, with customers
more likely to remove signs of previous users’ misbehavior. The results suggest that access-based service providers should address customer misbehavior by (a) investing in the products they offer access to, (b) establishing more personal relationships with customers, and, foremost, (c) increasing communal identification among customers.
As a backlash against capitalism, there is a growing resistance to transnational brands and corporate globalization. To cite a few trends, consumers are opposing global brands and expressing concerns about corporate practices related to environmental issues and human rights. The purpose of this study is to investigate the current anti-brand social movement by examining consumer activist groups on the Internet. We identified three anti-brand websites for in-depth analysis: anti-Wal-Mart, anti-McDonald's, and anti-Starbuck's. Based on 36 interviews and a two-year examination of anti-brand communities, we provide an understanding of why online anti-brand communities form, we explore the behavioral manifestations of such movements, and we discuss technological influences. The concluding section discusses our findings in terms of implications for theory.
Grounded in cognitive-affective theories of emotion, an extended conceptual framework of consumer animosity is developed that (1) distinguishes between consumers’ cognitive appraisal of the international dispute and the resulting emotional response, (2) expands from a valence-based approach to consider the differential effects of agonistic (i.e., anger) and retreat emotions (i.e., fear), and (3) examines three distinct consumer coping processes (product avoidance, negative word of mouth (NWOM), product quality judgment). A cross-cultural test of the framework among Chinese (toward Japan) and American (toward Russia) consumers supports the mediational role of emotions, and finds that agonistic emotions are related to NWOM and product avoidance, but not product quality judgment. In contrast, retreat emotions are related to product avoidance and product quality judgment, but not NWOM. The findings provide guidance for international brand managers on recognizing and detecting adverse sentiments toward their country of origin and accordingly modify their international brand strategy.
This research addresses consumers' willingness-to-punish the corporate brand for corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). It is supported by the extant literature on consumer stakeholders, corporate brands, brand personality, regulatory fit, and psychological contract, as well as by punishment in psychology and philosophy, which are new to the marketing literature. Using an experimental design with a control group, this research examines consumers' willingness-to-reward and its converse willingness-to-punish a corporate brand under three treatment conditions of socially responsible, socially irresponsible, and environmentally friendly. Data were collected on four outcome variables of willingness-to-punish, willingness-to-reward, brand attitude, and purchase intention for each treatment group. MANOVA results indicated that there were systematic differences in the levels of outcomes among the four groups. Discriminant function analysis found the socially irresponsible group was statistically significantly different from the other three experimental groups for all four outcome variables. Consumers dealing with socially irresponsible corporate brands were more likely to punish and less likely to reward than consumers in the other three treatment conditions. This study illustrates the latent negative impact from CSI activities on four important dimensions of consumer response. The findings indicate there is a pragmatic need for corporate brand strategists to recognize consumers' willingness-to-punish the corporate brand and the subsequent necessity to avoid activities that consumers may perceive to be socially irresponsible.
Replicating Johnston & Warkentin (2010), we demonstrate that social influence and self-efficacy are the main drivers of compliance with fear appeals. Contrary to the original study, we find that the acknowledgment of a severe threat encourages subjects to seize on the proposed recommendation, bolstering perceptions of efficacy. With this sole exception, the original results are fully replicated in a different research context employing a different population.
Motivated by advances in mass customization in business practice, explosion in the number of internet of things devices, and the lack of published research on privacy differentiation and customization, we propose a contextual information relevance model of privacy. We acknowledge the existence of individual differences with respect to unique security and privacy protection needs. We observe and argue that it is unfair and socially inefficient to treat privacy in a uniform (or less differentiated) manner whereby a large proportion of the population remain unsatisfied by a common policy. Our research results provide quantifiable means to measure and evaluate the customized privacy. We show that with privacy differentiation, the social planner will observe increases in demand and overall social welfare. Our results also show that business practitioners could profit from privacy customization.
This article sheds light on the current state of research on consumer brand relationships (CBR) and presents two distinct taxonomies, respectively, theoretical frameworks that help to classify CBR research. First, the ‘brand connection matrix’ that classifies brand relationships into functional-based (low versus high) and emotional-based (low versus high) connections to brands. This framework leads us with a 2 × 2 matrix consisting of four quadrants, each of which are discussed. Second, the ‘brand feeling matrix’ classifies consumer’s relationships with brands by grouping them into the strengths of relationships (weak versus strong) and the consumers’ feeling toward the brand (positive versus negative). The latter taxonomy leads to another 2 × 2 matrix where each of the four quadrants is discussed. Finally, this article discusses the papers in this special issue and applies the two frameworks by grouping the papers into the corresponding quadrants.
Service failure Consumer revenge Avoidance behavior Idiocentrism Allocentrism Coping behavior This article proposes a conceptual model of consumer revenge behavior. Drawing on the cognitive appraisal theory, the authors address revenge as a coping process and investigate the influence of cultural values along the process. The article reviews existing models on revenge behavior and adapts the Lazarus cognitive– emotive model of coping to the revenge context. In an attempt to extend revenge to other cultures, the paper relates the cognitive, emotional and motivational patterns with individual-level differences in cultural values. More specifically, the study's model incorporates consumer allocentrism and idiocentrism tendencies as a moderator. The manuscript emphasizes psychological mechanisms as well as coping strategies throughout the main body of the discussion. The article concludes with salient issues for future research.
Background: We report on what may well be the world’s largest multisensory tasting experiment. Over a period of four days in May 2014, almost 3,000 people sampled a glass of red wine while in a room in which the colour of the lighting and/or the music was changed repeatedly. The participants rated the wine, presented in a black tasting glass, on taste, intensity, and liking scales while standing in each of four different environments over a period of 7-8 minutes. During the first two days (Experiment 1), the participants rated the wine while exposed to white lighting, red lighting, green lighting with music designed to enhance sourness, and finally under red lighting paired with music associated with sweetness. During the latter two days of the event (Experiment 2), the same wine was rated under white lighting, green lighting, red lighting with sweet music, and finally green lighting with sour music.
Results: In Experiment 1, the wine was perceived as fresher and less intense under green lighting and sour music, as compared to any of the other three environments. On average, the participants liked the wine most under red lighting while listening to sweet music. A similar pattern of results was reported in Experiment 2.
Conclusions: These results demonstrate that the environment can exert a significant influence on the perception of wine (at least in a random sample of social drinkers). We outline a number of possible explanations for how the sensory properties of the environment might influence the perception of wine. Finally, we consider some of the implications of these results for the wine drinking experience.
Theft crimes injure individuals and businesses while distorting their routine activities. US retail theft losses are now estimated at over $16 billion annually causing retail crime prevention practitioners to deploy situational crime prevention measures alongside routine precautions. However, field practitioners lack theoretically grounded experimental research to more accurately assess asset protection method efficacy. This article describes the results of a 47 store location randomized controlled trial (RCT) of three situational crime prevention treatments (in-aisle closed-circuit television (CCTV) public view monitors, in-aisle CCTV domes, polycarbonate protective keeper or safer boxes). The treatments’ contextual mechanisms of action (MOA) are also described to further evaluate their effectiveness while providing insight for practical process adjustment. The study provided positive evidence of the three treatments’ MOA impacts on existing opportunity structures, as well as their real-world efficacy.
Containing customer fraud has great economic relevance. This research proposes a fresh approach, derived from mental accounting theory and behavioral pricing research. Large-scale field data from more than 100,000 insurance customers and a follow-up experiment reveal that payment schemes influence customer fraud. Specifically, customers with annual payment schedules submit more rejected claims soon after their lump sum payments, and customers with monthly payment schedules exhibit greater customer fraud, in an effect that increases over time and decreases with greater category involvement. Customers who actively pay using money transfers submit about 40% more claims that get rejected than those who rely on more passive payment methods, such as autopay or direct debit. Marketing practitioners thus should reconsider frequent payment schedules and active payment options and monitor customer behavior after lump sum payments. For marketing research, this study opens a new research avenue, linking customer misbehavior and behavioral pricing research within a mental accounting framework.
A typology of service organizations is presented and a conceptual framework is advanced for exploring the impact of physical surroundings on the behaviors of both customers and employees. The ability of the physical surroundings to facilitate achievement of organizational as well as marketing goals is explored. Literature from diverse disciplines provides theoretical grounding for the framework, which serves as a base for focused propositions. By examining the multiple strategic roles that physical surroundings can exert in service organizations, the author highlights key managerial and research implications.
Shoplifting is the largest contributor to inventory depletion in the US retail sector. To effectively mitigate and prevent such criminal activity, one needs to understand the shoplifter's perspectives on the suitability of the retail products targeted for shoplifting. Extending Routine Activity Theory (RAT) from criminology literature to include usefulness of online information, we analyze shoplifters' perceptions regarding future target suitability by considering a retail item's value, inertia, visibility, and accessibility (VIVA). We also examine how online information about a target's disposal and guardianship can influence shoplifters' decisions. In this paper, the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method was used to analyze data collected in the Western New York area over a one-year period. The results show positive effects of value and reverse inertia on target suitability. Interestingly, the relationship between target suitability and the usefulness of online information about post-shoplifting disposal activity was negative. Implications for future research and practical applications for shoplifting prevention are discussed.
Vicarious embarrassment is a negative emotion, which is experienced by an individual when others misbehave. People can feel vicariously embarrassed when observing other people's pratfalls or awkward appearance. For instance, vicarious embarrassment is elicited when watching reality TV or in service encounters where many other customers are present. However, the relevance of vicarious embarrassment in physical service environments has not yet been thoroughly analyzed in the context of service encounters. The objective of the present study is to close this research gap and to introduce the phenomenon of vicarious embarrassment to service research. The findings of 25 in-depth interviews indicate that vicariously embarrassing incidents mostly occur in service encounters and that these incidents are triggered by the violation of social norms in both customer-to-customer and customer-to-employee interactions. The authors of the present paper identified closeness of relationship, the service context, and parties involved as important situational variables influencing vicarious embarrassment and further emotional, cognitive, and behavioral consequences for the observing person. From a managerial point of view, the relevance of vicarious embarrassment in physical service environments is caused by negative spillover effects of the service experience, which lead to decreasing customer satisfaction, negative word-of-mouth and purchase intentions, and a negative impact on the overall image of the service provider.
Trolling involves deliberate, deceptive and mischievous attempts to provoke reactions from other online users. Even though trolling causes problems for marketers and consumers, there has been little discussion about what trolling actually is and how marketers should respond to it. The present conceptual study addresses these gaps. First, we present a working, integrative definition of trolling behaviours, arguing that trolling is substantively different from cyberbullying. Next, we present the challenges of current trolling regulations, showing that trolling is sometimes the result of the regulations themselves. The paper concludes with a presentation of the conceptual model of the manifestation of trolling behaviours. The model informs and assists scholars and marketing practitioners concerned with understanding and addressing trolling.
Companies routinely analyse the online activities of consumers to understand shopping habits and buying patterns. As the amount of personal information available online has grown, so has the potential for its misuse. When consumers believe that their personal information is being used for an unstated purpose, they may consider the firm to be acting unethically. They may then falsify their personal information online as a reaction to apparent ethical violations by companies or as an opportunistic unethical act of their own. The purpose of the present research is to propose a framework that could be used to understand consumer intentions to falsify personal information online. The research is important from both a theoretical and business perspective. From a theoretical standpoint, they add to the literature on the dark side of marketing by examining ethically questionable behaviour by consumers. The research is relevant for firms because when consumers falsify personal information their ability to target consumers with personalised offers is diminished. The research is also relevant for policymakers as they evaluate existing regulatory safeguards intended to protect consumer information online.
Streaming music services have exploded in popularity in the past few years, variously raising optimism and concern about their impacts on recorded music revenue. Even if streaming displace sales, it may still raise overall revenue if the streaming payment is large enough in relation to the extent of sales displacement. We make use of the growth streaming during the years 2013-2015 to measure their collective impact on unpaid consumption and on the sales of recorded music. We are unable to statistically distinguish the distinct impacts of these services, but we reject that their combined impact on sales is zero. We also find that streaming displaces music piracy. Given the current industry’s revenue from track sales (1.51 and 2.14 per thousand streams, our sales displacement estimates show that the losses from displaced sales are roughly outweighed by the gains in streaming revenue.
The present study investigates the effectiveness of fear appeals, including type of punishment (social disapproval vs. fines), probability of getting caught when shoplifting, and severity of the punishment, in preventing shoplifting among adolescents. Results show that when the chance of getting caught is low, social punishment messages should stress severe levels of social disapproval. When social disapproval messages imply a high probability of apprehension, the severity of social rejection does not affect shoplifting intentions. Finally, messages focusing on fines should depict large instead of small fines, irrespective of the communicated probability of getting caught.
Many retailers offer refunds to consumers who, after a trial period, return a product that they find does not fit their needs. Some consumers are willing to use this return option opportunistically for short-term consumption rather than its intended purpose of resolving fit uncertainty. Such behavior has been termed "wardrobing." Restocking fees (partial refunds) can be used to combat wardrobing. However, there is a trade-off involved, since partial refunds will be viewed negatively by consumers who return an item due to a true lack of fit. In this study, we consider how the extent of wardrobing (how many consumers consider such behavior) and the benefit of wardrobing (how much value can be extracted during the trial) impact firm pricing decisions and profits in this retail context. Our results imply that an increase in the extent of wardrobing is most detrimental to profits when the current extent of wardrobing is low. On the contrary, if the extent of wardrobing is already very high, and the benefit of wardrobing to consumers is also high, the retailer can set prices and refunds such that additional wardrobing actually increases firm profits. In a model extension, we show how a retailer can effectively screen wardrobers from ordinary consumers by offering a menu of price/refund pairs, and that such an approach can lead to increased profits if the extent of wardrobing is sufficiently high. Overall, our findings provide new insights into how retailers can set prices and refund policies to effectively manage opportunistic behavior by consumers.
This study explores the communication approaches used by hotel managers in responding to their guests’ online reviews. Data were collected from one of the largest hotel booking websites (Booking.com). Specifically, 447 responses provided by hotel managers belonging to an international chain (Best Western) were analysed within the ethos/logos/pathos framework. The findings highlight that hotel managers tend to adopt either a company-focused or a customer-focused style in their responses. Suggestions for practitioners are provided for effectively responding to online guest reviews.
Marketers frequently use scarcity promotions, where a product or event is limited in availability. The present research shows conditions under which the mere exposure to such advertising can activate actual aggression that manifests even outside the domain of the good being promoted. Further, we document the process underlying this effect: exposure to limited-quantity promotion advertising prompts consumers to perceive other shoppers as competitive threats to obtaining a desired product and physiologically prepares consumers to aggress. Seven studies using multiple behavioral measures of aggression demonstrate this deleterious response to scarcity promotions.
When self-service checkout (SCO) first launched in the United States in 1992 there was considerable scepticism and, perhaps not surprisingly, concern that huge losses would follow. Despite conflicting evidence on their impact on shrinkage, and customer theft in particular, consumer-oriented payment systems are an increasingly common feature of the retail environment. This paper reviews how the move to SCO has affected retail theft. Drawing on recent market research surveys suggesting that up to a third of customers regularly steal when using SCO in supermarkets, the paper outlines the aetiology of a new breed of shoplifter, ‘the SWIPERS’, and presents a typology of these offenders.
This article analyzes how an iconic brand is threatened by the societal trend of anti-consumption motivated by well-being. Under scrutiny is the iconic brand Nutella that is recognized worldwide. In France, it has been linked to public debates on well-being concerns about palm oil. Approaching the phenomenon from a consumer perspective and through observational netnography, we investigate the accommodation work undertaken by Nutella lovers in reaction to anti-palm oil attacks. We identify three major accommodation processes: neutralization, interiorization, and adhesion. Each of these processes is constituted of three different practices. Our study shows that while an iconic brand can resist anti-consumption claims thanks to its brand community, such disputes can cause the brand to lose part of its strength. We suggest that anti-consumption for an iconic brand such as Nutella may thus be ambivalent.
Purpose – This chapter seeks to understand the concept of consumer misbehavior, especially in the form of consumer deviance and/or dysfunction.
Method/approach – We review the marketing literature on consumer misbehavior, organizing the major themes scholars have used. We also differentiate between two perspectives researchers can employ: (1) misbehavior as deviance and (2) misbehavior as a wider construct.
Findings – Marketers generally overlook consumer misbehavior and put the cost down as that of running a business. Furthermore, they are burdened by the notion of customer sovereignty which is the dictum that “customers are always right.” But customers also lie, cheat, steal, harass, and abuse. Consumer misbehavior is thus multifaceted which in turn makes the definition difficult to pin down. After reviewing the many definitions of consumer misbehavior, including cyber misbehavior, the authors concluded that the disruption perspective is more managerially useful than the perspective based on violation of norms. This is because disruption of the business is not only harmful or unlawful but can lead to a loss of well-being, material resources, and reputation of individuals and/or organizations.
Implications – The chapter proposes a Pre-di-post framework that can be used to deal with customer misbehavior.
Originality/value – Most marketing scholars have focused primarily on misbehavior as deviance, yet this limits the kinds of problems one tends to focus on and the range of solutions one normally considers. We offer an alternative perspective where misbehavior may be instead “an unremarkable consequence of normal conditions” which may suggest a wider range of amelioration strategies.
This article explores the effects of time and relationship strength on the evolution of customer revenge and avoidance in online public complaining contexts. First, the authors examine whether online complainers hold a grudge-in terms of revenge and avoidance desires-over time. They find that time affects the two desires differently: Although revenge decreases over time, avoidance increases over time, indicating that customers indeed hold a grudge. Second, the authors examine the moderation effect of a strong relationship on how customers hold this grudge. They find that firms' best customers have the longest unfavorable reactions (i.e., a longitudinal lovebecomes-hate effect). Specifically, over time, the revenge of strong-relationship customers decreases more slowly and their avoidance increases more rapidly than that of weak-relationship customers. Third, the authors explore a solution to attenuate this damaging effect-namely, the firm offering an apology and compensation after the online complaint. Overall, they find that strong-relationship customers are more amenable to any level of recovery attempt. The authors test the first two issues with a longitudinal survey and the third issue with a follow-up experiment.
Despite their implementations in a wide variety of applications, there are very few instances where every item sold at a retail store is RFID-tagged. While the business case for expensive items to be RFID tagged may be somewhat clear, we claim that even ‘cheap’ items (i.e., those that cost less than an RFID tag) should be RFID tagged for retailers to benefit from efficiencies associated with item-level visibility. We study the relative price premiums a retailer with RFID tagged items can command as well as the retailer’s profit to illustrate the significance of item-level RFID-tagging both cheap and expensive items at a retail store. Our results indicate that, under certain conditions, item-level RFID tagging of items that cost less than an RFID tag has the potential to generate significant benefits to the retailer. The retailer is also better off tagging all items regardless of their relative price with respect to that of an RFID tag compared to the case where only the expensive item is RFID-tagged.
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between group cohesion, group norms, and perceived social loafing among 118 soccer players playing junior league in Norway. Each player completed a questionnaire assessing group cohesion (task cohesion and social cohesion), team norms (productive norms, role involvement, and social support norms), and perceived social loafing. As predicted, all cohesion- and team-norm subscales were negatively correlated with perceived social loafing. Furthermore, the results showed that the players’ attraction to their team’s task as well as their perception of the productive- and social-support norm predicted perceptions of social loafing. A significant three-way interaction between task cohesion, social cohesion, and performance norm emerged. The analysis showed that the combination of high social cohesion, low task cohesion, and low team norms seems to underlie perceptions of social loafing.
We consider RFID tags and their applications from a recycling/remanufacturing perspective and propose a novel framework to assist such process based on item-level information visibility and instantaneous tracking/tracing ability enabled by RFID. The incorporation of RFID in the reverse supply chain results in cost reduction, service and production quality improvement and pollution and waste reduction. With RFID in a reverse supply chain, we observe the power shift from waste-driven to market-driven system. Moreover, RFID's value increases with uncertainties in reverse operations as well as individual products and components.
Purpose
– This study aims to examine animosity's role in determining consumers' product choices. Considerable research attention has been devoted to studying the relationship between animosity and consumers' willingness to buy foreign products. Few studies, however, have considered that individual consumers may harbor varying degrees of animosity toward different countries, thus, differentially affecting their willingness to buy products from these countries. The within‐subject comparison of the present study seeks to provide a clearer and cleaner approach to examining the impact of animosity on consumers' preferences for foreign products. Extending this line of inquiry, it also aims to explore the link between consumers' choice of products from high versus low animosity countries at different price levels.
Design/methodology/approach
– Two studies were conducted to examine the impact of consumer animosity on product choice. Study 1 contains a survey study, and Study 2 is a full factorial conjoint analysis.
Findings
– It is discovered that animosity plays a stronger role in determining consumers' willingness to buy foreign products from high‐level animosity countries than from low‐level animosity countries. Through conjoint analysis, the paper demonstrates that consumers are willing to make trade‐offs between price and animosity.
Originality/value
– This study fills a void in the literature by exploring what role animosity plays in determining a consumer's choice of products, particularly when different degrees of animosity are held toward different countries. The within‐subject design of this research provides considerable insight on this front. In addition, this study represents an initial attempt to explore the dynamics between animosity and price via a conjoint analysis.
Whilst computer-mediated communication (CMC) can benefit users by providing quick and easy communication between those separated by time and space, it can also provide varying degrees of anonymity that may en-courage a sense of impunity and freedom from being held accountable for inappropriate online behaviour. As such, CMC is a fertile ground for study-ing impoliteness, whether it occurs in response to perceived threat (flam-ing), or as an end in its own right (trolling). Currently, first and second-order definitions of terms such as im/politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987; Bousfield 2008; Culpeper 2008; Terkourafi 2008), in-civility (Lakoff 2005), rudeness (Beebe 1995, Kienpointner 1997, 2008), and etiquette (Coulmas 1992), are subject to much discussion and debate, yet the CMC phenomenon of trolling is not adequately captured by any of these terms. Following Bousfield (in press), Culpeper (2010) and others, this paper suggests that a definition of trolling should be informed first and foremost by user discussions. Taking examples from a 172-million-word, asynchro-nous CMC corpus, four interrelated conditions of aggression, deception, disruption, and success are discussed. Finally, a working definition of troll-ing is presented.
Using retailer case studies and a survey of employees, data are presented assessing the extent to which the introduction of self-scan checkouts in the retail environment affects the rate of shrinkage. It is argued that although available data currently suggest that they have little effect upon rates of shrinkage, the unique nature of the self-scan environment requires a more nuanced approach to the way in which crime prevention theory is used to understand the potential risks associated with this technology. It is concluded that retailers should think about creating ‘zones of control’ for self-scan areas and that offending behaviour generated by customer frustration with this technology offers further evidence of the way in which theories of neutralisation, situational prevention and cognitive dissonance can inform the increasingly complex interplay between consumers and retail spaces.