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This research aims to examine how consumers react to being ignored by a company once they have complained about an online service failure. The authors seek to propose that automatic reply e-mails to customer complaints are considered a form of cyberostracism, thus having equally harmful effects on customer perceptions as a mere no reply.

The authors first conducted a qualitative study to ensure that consumers feel ignored when companies fail to respond to their e-mails. This was followed by an experimental study that tested the research propositions. The experimental design was a 3 (ostracism) × 2 (severity of failure) factorial between-subjects design.

The results indicated that consumers did not perceive any significant difference between an automatic reply e-mail and no reply at all and perceived both to be a form of cyberostracism. It was also found that cyberostracism led to higher levels of negative emotions, lower levels of satisfaction, and higher levels of negative behavioural outcomes. The prediction that these impacts would be moderated by failure severity was partially supported.

These findings should alert retailers to the fact that when an online failure occurs, proactive and personalised recovery efforts are necessary to maintain customer loyalty and mitigate negative behavioural outcomes.

The authors extend the online failure literature by showing that automatic reply e-mail responses are perceived as cyberostracism and have an equally negative impact on consumer perceptions and post-failure behaviours as a mere no reply.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that online group buying is different from the traditional purchase model in that an aggregation of purchases on the internet can lead sellers to adopt various bargaining strategies. When buyers and sellers do not have the opportunity to meet face to face, consumer satisfaction is an important consideration for sellers.

This study investigates the influence of sellers’ strategies for offering bargains on consumers’ satisfaction, considering buyers’ characteristics and involvement. Data are analyzed by employing the multivariate analysis of variance.

The results demonstrate that the stage decreasing range strategy results in the highest level of consumer satisfaction with online group buying. In addition, consumers’ cognitive style, computer self-efficacy and involvement have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between incentive strategy and consumer satisfaction.

The findings show that for group buying consumers, stage decreasing range strategy reveals certain advantages, such as a short waiting time for gathering group buyers. Enterprises or online sellers that propose special offers for online group buying as part of their competitive strategy should consider the stage decreasing range strategy. Moreover, enterprises and sellers can adjust their operations according to consumers’ individual characteristics and construct good relationships in online group buying.

This study has investigated the influence of incentive strategies for offering bargains in online transactions on consumer’s satisfaction. The results of this study will provide some guidelines for managers of the e-retailing firms to maximize their abilities in terms of marketing activities.

Online consumer complaint behaviour that is observable to other consumers provides the firm with an opportunity to demonstrate transparency and service quality to the public eye. The purpose of this paper is to assist practitioners with a strategy to increase perceived accommodativeness in complaint management on social media and reduce the social risk associated with online consumer complaint behaviour using a social exchange theory perspective.

Six online experiments with 1,350 US Facebook users were conducted to investigate the effect of supportive and non-supportive virtually present others, and employee intervention on a consumer’s choice to complain, likelihood to make an observable complaint (on the Facebook page) and likelihood to make a non-observable complaint (via Facebook Messenger). The mediating role of perceived accommodativeness and subsequent social risk is also examined.

Supportive comments made to the complainant by virtually present others were found to influence participants’ decision to complain, heighten participants’ likelihood to complain about the Facebook page and reduce their likelihood to complain via Facebook Messenger. This effect was reversed in the presence of non-supportive virtually present others and was explained by perceived social risk. Further, a participant’s likelihood to complain about the Facebook page was increased when an employee intervention was directed at a non-supportive comment made to a complainant, by a virtually present other. This effect was explained by the perceived accommodativeness of the employee interaction.

The findings advance research on online consumer complaint behaviour by investigating how employee intervention can be used to increase the likelihood of an observable complaint. This research is limited in that it does not incorporate individual characteristics, such as introversion/extroversion and propensity to respond to peer pressure, which may affect participant responses.

This research shows that perceptions of social risk are most effectively reduced by employee intervention directed at a non-supportive comment (made to a complainant) of a virtually present other. Consumer complaint management strategies aimed at minimising perceptions of social risk and encouraging observable online complaint behaviour are proposed.

This research extends the consumer complaint behaviour taxonomy by introducing the term “observable complaining”, that is, visible complaints made on a Facebook page, and broadens understanding of the organisation’s role in managing non-supportive virtually present others to assuage perceptions of social risk in potential complainants.

This study aims to examine how social exclusion and the social status of a rejecter affect consumers’ purchase intentions toward ordinary products.

Three experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses.

The status of a rejecter, whether high or low, had a significant influence on individuals’ evaluations of ordinary products. Results showed that individuals who were rejected by a low status source had higher purchase intentions toward the ordinary (vs unique) products compared to those who were rejected by a high status source due to threatened self-concept.

With the increased number of lonely consumers in the market today, firms should pay closer attention to the behavioral patterns of consumers who are socially excluded. In addition, firms should be aware that consumers’ purchase intentions vary depending on the sources of social exclusion.

This paper addresses the significant impact of sources of social exclusion on consumers’ evaluation of ordinary products. Moreover, this study focuses on a relatively neglected definition of social status, namely, the sociometric status, to fill the gap in the social status literature.

This chapter examines the affordances of social media to understand how groups are experienced through social media. Specifically, the chapter presents a theoretical model to understand how affordances of social media promote or suppress entitativity.

Participants (N=265) were recruited through snowball sampling to answer questions about their recent Facebook status updates. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the goodness of fit for our model.

We validate a model of entitativity as it occurs through the affordances offered by social media. Participant’s knowledge that status update responders were an interacting group outside of Facebook affected their perceptions of interactivity in the responses. Interactivity and history of interactions were the strongest predictors of status update entitativity. Further, status update entitativity had positive relationships with overall Facebook entitativity as well as group identity.

To encourage group identity through social media, managers need to increase employees’ perceptions of entitativity, primarily by enabling employees to see the interactions of others and to contribute content in social media platforms.

This is the only study we know of that empirically examines how groups are experienced through social media. Additionally, we draw from an affordance perspective, which helps to generalize our findings beyond the site of our study.

This paper aims to examine a core member-customer threat in co-operatives (co-ops) by drawing from ostracism research, assessing co-op ostracism’s impact on critical membership and relational exchange outcomes and discussing why relationship marketing research needs to pay more attention to the overlooked role of implicit mistreatment forms in customer harm-doing.

Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, ostracism in co-ops was explored, and a measurement scale for co-op ostracism was developed. In Study 2, the core conceptual model was empirically tested with data from members of three different co-ops. In Study 3, a coping strategy was integrated into an extended model and empirically tested with a new sample of co-op members.

Ostracism is present in co-ops and “poisons” crucial relational (and membership) outcomes, despite the presence of other relationship-building or relationship-destroying accounts. Coupling entitativity with cognitive capital attenuates ostracism’s impact.

Inspired by co-ops’ membership model and inherent relational advantage, this research is the first to adopt a co-op member-customer perspective and shed light on an implicit relationship-destroying factor.

Co-op decision makers might use the diagnostic tool developed in the paper to detect ostracism and fight it. Moreover, a novel coping strategy for how co-ops (or other firms) might fend off ostracism threats is offered in the article.

The present study illuminates a dark side of a relationally profuse customer context, painting a more complete picture of relationship marketing determinants. Little attention has been given to ostracism as a distinct and important social behaviour in marketing research and to co-ops as a research context.

This study aims to research knowledge-sharing behavior and social capital from a pedagogical perspective. It explores the facilitating role of face-to-face and online interactions in social capital development to understand how the formation of a specific form of social capital nurtures knowledge-sharing behaviors.

A qualitative approach used interviews and a focus group to collect data from 20 teachers in different positions and subject areas.

For face-to-face interactions to form social capital, learning communities must develop features including shared vision, shared language, trust-building and self-development and foster identification with and commitment to the community. Of all the categories of pedagogical content knowledge exchanged among teachers, teachers seek knowledge of general pedagogy, representations and strategies and knowledge of curriculum and media more than any others. However, when differentiating between online and face-to-face activities, knowledge of the curriculum and media is sought more frequently online. In contrast, the preferred way of learning about general pedagogy is through face-to-face activities. The choice of knowledge channel reflects the complexity of the types of knowledge needed and the type of social ties required to support this exchange.

The research is expected to expand understanding of how teachers develop their social capital and how social ties foster knowledge-sharing behaviors. This study suggests professional development activities and online professional learning platforms facilitate building social ties.

Consumers share negative brand experience in many occasions to vent their emotion and seek support. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of negative sharing on members’ happiness in online brand communities by drawing from two opposing constructs: social support and social exclusion.

Both survey and experiment methods were employed to test the conceptual model. Online survey data were collected from 1,015 mobile internet users.

The findings reveal that negative sharing may enhance a sharer’s happiness through online social support particularly for novice community members. The findings also indicate greater online social exclusion for experienced members than for novice members. These findings cast doubt on the widely held assumption that increased engagement in a community will always produces positive outcomes. The moderating effect of membership duration is confirmed with an experiment of MI’s brand community members.

The study of happiness in online brand community sheds new light on consumer–brand and user–community relationships.

While most previous studies on negative sharing only explored the negative side of consequences, the authors contribute to this line of research by introducing both positive (social support) and negative (social exclusion) outcomes of negative reviews. The model also explains the conditions under which negative reviews enhance social support and social exclusion.

The purpose of this study is to present a systematic review of the online service failure (OSF) literature and conduct an exhaustive analysis of academic research on this emerging research area.

The current study has adopted a structured systematic literature review approach to synthesize and assess the OSF literature. Further, the study uses the Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methodology (TCCM) framework to propose future research directions in the OSF domain.

This systematic review shows that OSF research is still developing and remains mainly incoherent. Further, the study develops a conceptual framework integrating the frequently reported antecedents, mediators, moderator and consequences in the extant literature. This review also synthesizes the theoretical perspectives adopted for this domain.

The study followed specific inclusion and exclusion criteria to shortlist articles. Further, articles published only in the English language were considered. Hence, the findings of this review cannot be generalized to all OSF literature.

This systematic review has classified antecedents into customers' and service providers' roles which will enable online service providers to understand all sets of factors driving OSF. It also synthesizes and presents service recovery strategies and emphasizes the role of online customer support to fix OSF.

The OSF literature is still developing and remains highly incoherent, suggesting that a synthesized review is needed. This study has systematically reviewed and synthesized the OSF literature to study its development over time and proposes a framework which provides a comprehensive understanding of OSF.