Consumer-brand relationships under the effect of consumer dishonest behavior

Abstract

Purpose-This study aims to investigate the relationship between consumers' feeling of befooled and their relationship with the brand. It argues that when consumers react back to the wrongdoing brand by behaving dishonestly, they feel guilty so that they need to compensate for the post feelings of guilt by establishing stronger relationships with the brand. Methodology-This paper adopts a 2 (befooled) X 2 (ambiguity) factorial experimental design and moderated mediation (Hayes' (2013) PROCESS macro) to test causal relationships. It conveniently gathers 257 responses via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).Findings-This study reveals that when a brand does wrong to its customers, they engage in punitive behaviors. However, post feelings of guilty turn their brand attachment into positive and repair their commitment. Moreover, situational ambiguity nurtures consumers' dishonesty and hence increases feelings of guilt, which work in favor of consumer-brand relationship reparation. Conclusion-Overall, this paper reveals that negative instances may lead to repairing consequences for the consumer-brand relationships.