No abstract

While it is a popular belief that venting helps unload frustrations about negative (customer) experiences, its effects on consumers' emotional states and consumer‐brand forgiveness (CBF) remain to be explored. Given that a lot of customer complaints are made online, brands seem ambivalent about managing these public complaints without violating consumers' right to free speech. In two experiments, we find that writing a customer complaint increases negative emotions regarding an incident. Moreover, brands can mitigate this negative effect by asking consumers to moderate their speech—for example, with the help of a content moderation policy. Specifically, if brands impose restrictions on consumers' freedom to express their frustrations, essentially asking them for self‐censorship, anger levels in their language decrease and CBF increases. We demonstrate that this effect is stronger for consumers with strong self‐brand connection.

No abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic causes museums to seek financial aid from corporate sponsors. However, corporate sponsorship may have negative consequences for museums in terms of their authenticity. In this study, we therefore examine whether the extraordinary circumstances caused by the COVID-19 crisis change tourists' perceptions of corporate sponsorship. Indeed, we find that tourists react more positively to corporate sponsorship if the health crisis is salient. Moreover, we show that corporate sponsorship by multiple smaller- and medium-sized companies generates more positive outcomes for museums than the effort of a single large company, in terms of perceived authenticity loss, visiting intentions, and willingness to pay.

As public funding for the restoration of tourist attractions decreases, assistance is often sought from the private sector in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, research has yet to understand how such CSR activities impact the beneficiary, namely tourist attractions. Thus, extending past CSR literature, we explore whether differing company CSR motivations can influence a tourists' visiting intentions. The results of two experimental