Abstract

     When consumers use social media to complain, they threaten to undermine brands’ images and online reputations. Academics and managers usually regard such public complaining as harmful or as expressions of a desire to hurt brands. Instead, an alternative, benevolent, and educational consumer motivation for complaining on brands’ social media might exist. By specifying the nature of this educational calling to complain and the contextual variables that favor its emergence, the current research outlines the process by which well-intentioned consumers seek to help brands improve, even if it means publicly pointing fingers. Four experiments show that both desire for revenge and desire for reconciliation affect public complaining; strong ties and single deviation contexts favor the benevolent process of online complaining; and benevolent complainants are more amenable to process recovery communication that does not necessarily include compensation.

Introduction

What can Veepee improve?
Here are a few ideas:
– Allow the consumer to cancel his or her order (at least within 7 days, except for 48/72-hour sales).…
– Do not technically consider an additional order as a new order with the need to pay the shipping costs twice….
– Reward your loyal consumers with a points or credit system based on order amounts/volumes.

     These are the comments of one of your very first consumers (with 210 orders over 15 years), who unfortunately is getting tired of the increasing number of problems encountered.

Conclusion

     Public complaining is a form of negative WOM (Gr´egoire, Legoux, et al. 2018), motivated by desire for revenge (Gr´egoire, Ghadami, et al., 2018); we expand the scope of research into the motivations of public complainers, as they relate to brand relationships. With four studies, we demonstrate the relevance of more benevolent motivations for public complaining and thereby affirm findings that reconciliation-oriented consumers are less likely to complain following service failures (Mittal et al., 2008) (especially online, because they fear damaging the brand image; Einwiller & Steilen, 2015). But we also reveal that desire for reconciliation promotes educational calling, such that complainants want to help brands move forward. Finally, we identify the coexistence of a benevolent route with the malevolent route.

Theoretical implications

     A counterintuitive, supportive motivation for public complaining Although prior literature highlights consumers’ motivations to protect others (e.g., Schaefers & Schamari, 2016), it prioritizes brandrelated motivations that imply patterns of revenge or reparation (Gr´egoire & Fisher, 2008). Extant literature also suggests two key influences on public complaining behavior: desire for revenge that encourages complaining or desire for reconciliation that discourages retaliatory behaviors (Joireman et al., 2013). We provide a novel insight, by showing that public complaining can be a consequence of motivations, such as a desire for reconciliation, that favor brands. That is, consumers who complain online may be driven by their desire for reconciliation; their public complaints are benevolent, constructive, non-aggressive responses to perceived injustice (Aquino et al., 2006; Bradfield & Aquino, 1999; McCullough et al., 1998).