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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 paper aims to demonstrate that online complainants’ reactions to a company’s service recovery attempts (webcare) can significantly vary across two different types of dissatisfied customers (“vindictives” vs “constructives”), who have dramatically diverging complaint goal orientations.

Online multi-country survey among 812 adult consumers who recently had a dissatisfying brand experience and turned to a marketer-generated social media site to voice an online complaint for achieving their ultimate complaining goals. Scenario-based online experiment for cross-validating the survey findings.

Results suggest that “vindictive complainants” – driven dominantly by brand-adverse motives – are immune to any form of webcare, while “constructive complainants” – interested in restoring the customer-brand relationship – react more sensitively. For the latter, “no-responses” often trigger detrimental brand-related reactions (e.g. unfavorable brand image), whereas “defensive responses” are likely to stimulate post-webcare negative word-of-mouth.

This research identifies the gains and harms of (un-)desired webcare. By doing so, it not only sheds light on the circumstances when marketers have to fear negative effects (e.g. negative word-of-mouth) but also provides insights into the conditions when such effects are unlikely. While the findings of the cross-sectional survey are validated with an online experiment, findings should be interpreted with care as other complaining contexts should be further investigated.

Marketers have to expect a serious “backfiring effect” from an unexpected source, namely, consumers who were initially benevolent toward the involved brand but who received an inappropriate response.

This research is one of the first research studies that enables marketers to identify situations when webcare is likely to backfire on the brand after a service failure.

This paper seeks to advance paracrisis research by clarifying paracrises’ distinct features and developing typologies of paracrises and response strategies with strong external validity.

A case series study of 143 paracrises systematically selected from various news and trade sources was conducted to build an organizational paracrisis communication framework that connects paracrisis clusters with paracrisis response strategies.

Results of the study attest to the validity of the paracrisis concept by demonstrating refined paracrisis clusters’ connections with refined paracrisis response strategies.

This study enriches paracrisis research by refining the paracrisis definition, paracrisis clusters and response strategies. Its rigorous descriptions of how organizations address paracrises distinguish paracrisis response strategies from traditional crisis response strategies and generate rich possibilities for future analytic investigations.

As perhaps the first empirical attempt to build a comprehensive framework of organizational paracrisis communication, this descriptive study lays the groundwork for the burgeoning paracrisis communication research.

This study aims to investigate bystanders' perceptions and reactions to management responses to consumer complaints through digital service channels. Specific purposes are to examine how management response (i.e. warmth, competence) and individual differences (i.e. bystander power) work together to influence bystanders' information processing of service recovery.

This research consists of two main studies which employed web-based experiments. Both studies used a 2 (management response: warmth vs competence) × 2 (individual power: low vs high) between-subjects design. A total of 240 participants were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform in Study 1, and 233 participants were recruited from a market research company in Study 2.

Study 1 suggested that for the high-power group, warmth-related responses increased service perceptions (perceived diagnosticity and perceived fairness), and for low-power group, competence-related responses enhanced service perceptions. Study 2 confirmed the results of Study 1 and further demonstrated bystanders' service perceptions as the underlying mechanisms to connect the interactive effect of management response and individual power on satisfaction with complaint handling and WOM intentions.

The current research demonstrates how companies can effectively manage customers' experiences (i.e. bystanders' experiences) with service recovery management on digital platforms by demonstrating effective management responses to consumer complaints through digital service channels.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that explores bystanders' individual characteristics related to the information processing of service recovery through digital service channels.

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.

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.

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.

Many managers and scholars focus on how to repair brand image after a corporate crisis. This research paper aims to propose that a fresh start mindset (FSM) and brand crisis type can jointly influence consumer forgiveness.

Three studies were conducted to examine the authors’ hypotheses. Study 1 is a 3 (FSM: high vs low vs control) × 2 (brand crisis: controllable vs uncontrollable) between-subjects factorial design to test the interaction effect of FSM and brand crisis type on consumer forgiveness. Study 2 is a 2 (FSM: high vs low) × 2 (brand crisis: controllable vs uncontrollable) between-subjects factorial design to identify the affective and cognitive mechanisms in the influence of FSM and brand crisis type on consumer forgiveness. Study 3 is a 2 (FSM: high vs low) × 2 (brand crisis: controllable vs uncontrollable) × 3 (strategy: defensive strategy vs accommodative strategy vs reticence) between-subjects factorial design, aimed to identify the possible boundary conditions of this effect and tested the moderating role of brand crisis response strategies.

Study 1 finds that the FSM interacts with brand crisis type to affect consumer forgiveness. Specifically, consumers faced with uncontrollable (vs controllable) brand crises tend to increase (vs decrease) consumer forgiveness after a corporate crisis. Study 2 identifies the underlying mechanism, such that two distinct mechanisms drive the interaction effect. Affective empathy and perceived responsibility mediate the interaction effect of FSM and brand crisis type on forgiveness. Study 3 replicates the findings of studies 1 and 2 and confirms the boundary condition of the effect, showing that crisis response strategy moderates the interaction between FSM and brand crisis type.

Theoretically, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research observes the interactive effect of FSM and brand crisis for the first time, thus extending the existing research on both FSM and brand crisis. This study also enriches existing empathy and responsibility literature by examining the mediating role of empathy and perceived responsibility. Practical implications for marketers are apparent, especially after a brand crisis occurs. Corporates can deal with different types of the brand crisis based on consumers’ FSM. Finally, future research with regards to the findings is discussed.

This study applies social network theory to examine the moderating effects of two online social media network characteristics, namely homophily and consensus, on the influence of negative electronic word of mouth (NeWOM) and of firm crisis response on consumer attitude toward a company.

Hypotheses were tested using a mixed-model experimental design of three between-subjects factors, including manipulations of homophily (high vs low), consensus (high vs low), and firm crisis response (accommodative vs defensive), and one repeated measure within-subjects factor of attitude toward the company at three different points in time (A₀, A₁, A₂). Data were collected from 328 Thai participants who were randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions.

High homophily and high consensus online social media network conditions worsen the negative impact of NeWOM on consumer attitudes. However, high homophily and high consensus strengthen the positive influence of an accommodative response in regaining favorable attitude toward the company. Low homophily and low consensus negate the impact of the firm's defensive response, preventing any further deterioration of attitude toward the company.

Marketers need to understand the relational patterns among members of online social media networks in order to assess the extent to which consumers are influenced by others in the network. In doing so, the firm can better anticipate and manage the impact of NeWOM and can launch an appropriate response strategy that optimizes the recovery, or minimizes the deterioration, of lost company image and reputation.

This study provides a dynamic view of consumer attitudes and highlights the substantial impact that others in the online social media network have on consumers' evaluation of NeWOM and of firm recovery efforts.