Search Conferences

Type in any word, words or author name. This searchs through the abstract title, keywords and abstract text and authors. You may search all conferences or just select one conference.


 All Conferences
 EMAC 2019 Annual Conference
 EMAC 2020 Annual Conference
 EMAC 2020 Regional Conference
 EMAC 2021 Annual Conference
 EMAC 2021 Regional Conference
 EMAC 2022 Annual
 EMAC 2022 Regional Conference
 EMAC 2023 Annual
 EMAC 2023 Regional Conference

EMAC 2019 Annual Conference


The dark side of customer-brand relationships: Revenge following customer satisfaction
(A2019-8309)

Published: May 28, 2019

AUTHORS

Wolfgang Weitzl, University of Vienna; Clemens Hutzinger, Seeburg Castle University, Department of Management; Sabine Einwiller, University of Vienna

KEYWORDS

service failure; online complaining; customer satisfaction

ABSTRACT

Following service failures, dissatisfied customers increasingly turn to social media to voice their complaint online. In this research, we demonstrate that react with two key desires (i.e. revenge and reconciliation) to cope with the failure and that the customer-brand status (together with the attribution of blame) trigger these desires. Most importantly, however, we show that the two desires evolve during the service recovery episode from diffuse desires to concrete intentions (e.g., NWOM) and we further demonstrate that recovery satisfaction can unexpectedly affect this evolution. This study is able to provide empirical evidence that (depending on their relationship status), customers differently interpret a firm’s recovery efforts either positively or negatively. Committed customers, for example, take a satisfactory recovery attempt as a cue that their initial grudge against the involved brand is justified. A perception that triggers revenge and unfavorable customer-brand reactions.