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The purpose of this research is the exploration of online complainants' revenge based on their consumer-brand relationship strength and received webcare. The authors introduce inter-failures (i.e. the perceived number of earlier independent service failures that a customer has experienced with the same brand involved in the current service failure) as the central frame condition.

To test our hypotheses, both a scenario-based online experiment (n = 316) and an online survey (n = 492) were conducted.

With an increasing number of inter-failures, online complainants with a high-relationship strength move from the “love is blind” effect (no inter-failures) to the “love becomes hate” effect (multiple inter-failures), when they ultimately become more revengeful than their low-relationship strength counterparts. In addition, the authors show that in the case of no or few inter-failures, accommodative webcare has a lasting positive effect over no/defensive webcare for both low- and high-relationship complainants. More importantly, however, when consumers have experienced multiple inter-failures, accommodative webcare becomes ineffective (for low-relationship complainants) or boomerangs by cultivating revenge towards the brand (among high-relationship complainants), but not strategic avoidance.

The findings have pronounced implications for the literature on customer–brand relationships following service failures and the literature, which predominantly emphasizes the unconditionally positive effects of accommodative webcare.

This study is the first that simultaneously considers the prior customer–brand relationship, inter-failures and webcare to explain online complainants' revenge.

As a social media platform, Twitter enables direct, continuous and real-time communication across many markets simultaneously. Drawing on speech act theory (SAT), this study aims to view tweets as “speech acts” and explores whether language and brand on Twitter influence firm value.

The frequency of two language types (accommodative and defensive) used on four corporate Twitter accounts for Sony and Microsoft was observed during the product launch periods of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, respectively, covering 5,056 tweets. A linear mixed model was used to analyze whether language and brand influence firm value.

Results show that accommodative language used by firms on their corporate Twitter accounts has an overall negative influence on firm value the following day, whereas the use of defensive language has a positive influence. Moreover, the effects of these language types on firm value are attenuated when the Twitter accounts are personal, compared to the brand accounts.

This study focuses on one type of social media platform (Twitter) and one product category (video game consoles). Future studies should investigate other platforms and product categories to improve generalizability.

Managers should carefully strategize their use of Twitter, especially the use of language and account type, as they can significantly affect firm value.

This study applies SAT to explain how language and brand on Twitter can influence firm value.

Despite the growing consensus that consumers extensively use online reviews and that negative reviews can significantly damage brand equity, it remains uncertain whether negative online reviews that focus on different aspects of a service have a similar or differential effect on brand equity. This study aims to fill this gap and explores the mediating role of emotional contagion and what kind of response helps better deter their negative effect.

This research is conducted through a one-panel study and three experimental studies. SAS enterprise miner is used for text mining analysis and Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Process macro models are used to analyze the experimental data.

Negative reviews related to the tangibility, responsiveness and empathy dimensions have a more detrimental effect on brand equity than negative reviews related to the assurance and reliability dimensions. The results also provide evidence that emotional contagion is more prevalent when consumers read reviews that are specific to the empathy and responsiveness dimensions. Finally, accommodative responses from the service provider are more effective in deterring the effect of a negative online review on brand equity.

The generalizability of this study is limited to the restaurant and hotel industry.

The findings will also help the brand manager in understanding the comparative effect of service quality-specific negative reviews on brand equity and also the type of responses that brand managers should give to negative reviews.

Despite online reviews receiving increased attention in academic research, Service quality (SERVQUAL) dimension-specific reviews have not been studied until now. This study contributes to the service quality-related literature by providing evidence that not all negative online reviews related to different Service quality (SERVQUAL) dimensions equally affect brand equity.

This study aims to examine the role that four distinct bundles (developmental, utilisation, maintenance and accommodative) of HRM practices play in enhancing work engagement among chronically ill employees, and to analyse whether perceptions of discrimination on the grounds of illness can affect these relationships.

The data were collected through a quantitative survey using a sample of 669 chronically ill employees of a major Italian company.

This study's findings confirm the importance of discerning between positive, insignificant and negative effects of distinct HR bundles on chronically ill employees' work engagement. Furthermore, this study's results suggest that the positive effect of utilisation practices (i.e. practices aimed at enabling employees to make full use of existing, but not yet necessarily utilised, individual resources) on engagement is greater when chronically ill employees perceive a discrimination-free work environment.

This study's findings confirm the importance of discerning between positive, no, and negative effects of distinct HR bundles on chronically ill employees' work engagement. Furthermore, this study's results suggest that the positive effect of utilisation practices (i.e. practices aimed at enabling employees to make full use of existing but not necessarily applied individual resources) on engagement is greater when chronically ill employees perceive a discrimination-free work environment.

The study highlights those HR bundles that have the capacity to positively affect the work engagement of chronically ill employees, a minority group rarely considered in HRM studies. Furthermore, the research identifies perceived discrimination on the grounds of illness as a contextual condition that may hinder the otherwise positive effect of HRM practices on the engagement of workers suffering from a chronic illness.

The purpose of this paper is to provide managers with insights to help survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. Given the environment at the time of this paper, this paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis like COVID-19.

The authors offer a conceptual framework, grounded in the attribution theory and situation crisis communication theory (SCCT), for managers to use when determining which crisis response strategy is most appropriate to use during a crisis. Propositions based on this framework are provided. This paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis, particularly on the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the framework proposed for organizational crisis response strategy and recovery, several insights for managers across a variety of industries emerge. Consideration of the best strategic approach to a crisis is essential, and time is critical. This framework provides a starting point for creating a proper response strategy when a crisis arises that is not within the organization’s crisis management planning. Managerial implications for several industries, such as restaurant, hotel, airline, education, retail, medical and other professional services, and theoretical implications to further the advancement of understanding are provided.

The findings of this paper demonstrate that organizations that apply an accommodative strategy during unintentional crises will survive, while during intentional crises, they will thrive in the marketplace. Similarly, organizations that apply an offensive strategy during unintentional crises will thrive, while during intentional crises, they will survive in the marketplace.

This paper provides a framework highlighting strategies that best protect an organization during both internally and externally caused crises. The response strategy and crisis framework are based on the attribution theory and SCCT. Building on this framework, six propositions are postulated. In keeping with this strategy and crisis framework, this study provides several crisis response insights for managers across a variety of industries. These suggestions act as a guide for managers when assessing how to respond in the early days of a crisis and what to do to recover from it.

This paper provides a crisis-strategy matrix, grounded in the attribution theory and SCCT, to provide decision-making guidance to help managers survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. The authors provide multiple industry insights related to the “how to” and the “what to” in the recovery from and survival through internally and externally caused crises.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of explanation and compensation, as specific accommodative management responses to negative online customer reviews, on potential customers.

The scenario-based online experiment with 306 participants investigates the effects of explanation and compensation on potential customers’ purchase intentions in the hotel segment of the hospitality industry.

The results reveal that combining an explanation with compensation is the most effective management response; providing neither an explanation nor compensation is the least effective. The effects of management responses that entail providing only an explanation or compensation do not differ significantly.

Continued research should investigate the effects of specific accommodative management responses in other service industries and other cultural settings and consider different kinds of explanations and compensation.

Hotel managers in the hospitality industry should reply to negative online customer reviews by combining an explanation with compensation. Service providers that currently lack structures and procedures to identify service failures and their causes or that cannot take corrective actions should provide compensation. Service providers that currently have limited financial resources should provide explanations.

This study analyses the effects of explanation and compensation on potential customers’ purchase intentions. In addressing the effects on potential customers, instead of on complainants, the conceptual framework represents a novel combination of management responses from service recovery research with signalling theory, the search-experience-credence framework and risk reduction methods.

Accommodative competitive entry policies (unbundling, resale and interconnection) yield contestable retail telecommunications markets. The combination of setting efficient prices for network elements and allowing competitors to choose their preferred level of wholesale quality renders the retail market self‐regulating with respect to both price and quality. Any overhang of regulation at the retail level under these conditions is potentially harmful to fostering a competitive market outcome.

Since public sector organizations provide services to citizens but struggle with poor perceptions of their functioning, it is valuable to examine how their online responses to complaints on social media could impact their reputation. Yet, surprisingly little is known about effects of public organizations' webcare. Therefore, this study assesses the impact of the webcare's tone, response strategy and user's involvement on participants’ continuance intention and perceptions of reputation.

Two experimental studies (Study 1: N = 424; Study 2: N = 203) with an interval of one week were carried out to assess the effects of singular and repeated exposure to webcare by a Dutch public transport organization on the participants' continuance intention and perceived organizational reputation. Study 1 examined the effects of the webcare's tone (corporate vs conversational human voice (CHV)) and response strategy (accommodative vs defensive); Study 2 contained tone of voice and user's involvement (observer vs complainer). The effects of repeated exposure to the webcare's tone were also examined.

The results indicate that perceptions of CHV in webcare contribute to webcare as reputation management tool, since it leads to immediate higher reputation scores that also remain stable after repeated exposure. Furthermore, people's continuance intention increased after repeated exposure to webcare responses that were perceived as CHV, thus a natural and engaging communication style, indicating this is an effective strategy for customer care as well. No substantial impact was found for response strategy and user's involvement in the complaint handling.

The novelty of this study is that the authors assess the effects of the webcare's tone combined with response strategy and user's involvement in a public sector context with a sector-specific conceptualization of reputation and continuance intention measured after singular and repeated exposure to webcare.