Brand hate, rage, anger & co.: Exploring the relevance and characteristics of negative consumer emotions toward brands

There's not much to tell: The impact of emotional resilience on negative word‐of‐mouth following service failure

“…Importantly, the emotions that people subjectively experience involve tendencies for certain behavioral responses that are relevant to the events that elicited them (Gross, 2015). Discrete negative emotions have been linked to, often, undesirable consumer behaviors such as brand switching and avoidance, complaining, revenge, and the behavior under present investigation, negative word‐of‐mouth (Haase et al, 2022; Harrison‐Walker, 2019). Critically, downregulating negative emotions (e.g., anger) makes individuals less likely to engage in corresponding emotion‐related behaviors (e.g., fighting and aggression; Aday et al, 2017).…”

“…Negative emotions such as anger and frustration are often experienced in response to service failures (Bougie et al, 2003; Smith & Bolton, 2002; Su et al, 2018). Given that negative emotions correlate with behavioral outcomes (Haase et al, 2022; Harrison‐Walker, 2019), the negative emotions elicited by service failures will largely determine consumers' subsequent behaviors (McColl‐Kennedy & Sparks, 2003; McColl‐Kennedy et al, 2009), like their propensity to engage in negative word‐of‐mouth. Accordingly, service recovery efforts often aim to induce positive and/or reduce negative emotions stemming from service failures (DeWitt et al, 2008; Kobel & Groeppel‐Klein, 2021; Lastner et al, 2016).…”

“…Consumers respond to these service failures in a variety of ways (e.g., Singh, 1988): Some stay level‐headed and quickly move on; some go blind with rage, unleashing a verbal assault on the hapless customer service representative; and others still engage in negative word‐of‐mouth, sharing their negative experiences with friends, family, and/or strangers (McGraw et al, 2015; Obeidat et al, 2017; Richins, 1984; Sengupta et al, 2015; Surachartkumtonkun et al, 2013). Importantly, behavioral responses to service failures—including negative word‐of‐mouth—are products of the discreet negative emotions that service failures elicit (Haase et al, 2022; Harrison‐Walker, 2019; Wetzer et al, 2007). The present research investigates how emotional resilience influences emotional responses to service failures and subsequently impacts the expression of negative word‐of‐mouth—an emotion‐related behavior that is of great concern to marketing managers.…”

Punitive switching costs and behavioral responses in the context of contractual services

“…Moreover, such a captive experience can make customers feel unfair (Furrer et al , 2021), powerless (Rayburn et al , 2020) and vulnerable (Wilson-Nash, 2022). If these perceptions arise, then customers are likely to experience NEs (Barclay et al , 2005), which are considered an antecedent of both SI and NWOM toward the service provider (Biraglia et al , 2021; Furrer et al , 2021; Haase et al , 2022).…”

“…Prior research suggests that if customers feel captive by their current service provider, then they are prone to experience a wide range of captivity feelings such as anger, disappointment or helplessness (Bunker and Ball, 2008; Furrer et al , 2021; Rayburn et al , 2020). Such feelings can lead to negative behaviors such as NWOM (Chao et al , 2021; Tan et al , 2021; Yin et al , 2022) or switching (Haase et al , 2022; Mookherjee et al , 2021; Roy et al , 2022). Consequently, these behaviors in turn can damage profitability (Jones et al , 2007).…”