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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the negative impressions consumers hold toward institutional food can be remedied by subtle changes in menu descriptions. While an expectancy-disconfirmation explanation would suggest this, a negativity bias explanation would suggest otherwise.

The authors test the research question using an experimental 2 × 2 full factorial design, with data collected from 100 university students.

The results show that when hospital menus are made somewhat fancier in their description, consumers evaluate the food as more attractive and menu variation to be greater. This implies that the judgments are more likely to be based on an expectancy-disconfirmation process that on being subject to negativity bias.

The authors study perceived attractiveness and menu variation, but future research should include taste perceptions and consumption volume.

Institution managers could improve consumer perceptions of how attractive the food being served is, and the perceived variation in their menus, by subtly changing the course descriptions to become fancier. However, as such, a strategy based on an expectancy-disconfirmation process, institution managers should beware not to sweeten the pill too much, i.e., making promises they cannot keep may backfire if one makes the menus too fancy compared to what is delivered.

The authors extend current knowledge on menu label effects by addressing them for food suppliers, which are inherently associated with low food quality. The authors also show that when managers apply such strategies, the effect is due to a disconfirmation process rather than a negativity bias.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate four possible asymmetries in US aggregate consumption and its major components (durables, non-durables, and services) for the period 1990-2013. Understanding the asymmetric behavior of the components is important since the impact of monetary policy on separate consumer spending categories may differ substantially.

The authors first employ stationarity and cointegration tests to specify and estimate the long-run equilibrium relationship between consumer spending and such variables as disposable income, consumer sentiment, and the expected real interest rate. The authors then specify a structural error-correction model for each spending category to simultaneously investigate such possible asymmetries due to the ratchet effect, psychological negativity bias, interest rate effect, and varying degree of adjustment in eliminating disequilibrium defined as the gap between actual and desired spending.

First, consumption and its major components all display asymmetric behavior consistent with psychological negativity bias. Second, consumer spending on durable goods also displays asymmetries consistent with both the ratchet effect and the interest rate effect. Third, non-durables respond asymmetrically to disequilibrium; consumers adjust (increase) spending on non-durables only when actual spending is below desired spending on non-durable goods. Fourth, services also respond asymmetrically to disequilibrium; consumers adjust (reduce) spending on services only when actual spending is above desired spending on services.

This study provides new insight on the asymmetric behavior of consumer spending. The authors believe that the findings should help with macroeconomic policymaking when such indicators as income, consumer sentiment, and expected real interest rates display significant variations.

Word‐of‐mouth (WOM) communication, satisfaction and service quality are inextricably linked. However, despite much research, the shape of the satisfaction‐WOM relationship is not known. At present, three relationships are supported. This paper aims to develop and test a model of how the satisfaction‐WOM relationship varies depending on the type of service encounter, thus reconciling past conflicting findings.

A number of service quality indicators are manipulated and a fully factorial 2×3 experiment is conducted to test the hypotheses on 281 respondents.

All four hypotheses are supported; in certain types of service encounters high levels of satisfaction lead to greater WOM activity than low levels of satisfaction (positivity bias) and this relationship is reversed in a second type of service encounter (negativity bias).

This research shows that relationships between constructs are highly context dependent and can change dramatically. Future research would do well to test the framework developed in this paper with different respondents and different types of encounters.

To best benefit from WOM, practitioners are advised to vary their management of service quality and customer satisfaction, depending on the type of service industry they operate in.

This paper reconciles three conflicting streams of research. This is also the first paper to empirically test a service taxonomy developed by Price et al. and to demonstrate consumers' vastly different reactions to the resulting two extreme types of services.

Drawing upon the negativity bias theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of positive and negative perceptions of police-initiated or citizen-initiated contacts on three distinctive dimensions of public satisfaction with police (PSWP).

The data were obtained from a random-sample telephone survey of 1,143 residents in Houston in 2012. The OLS regressions were conducted with variables derived from the contact model and neighborhood context model that were often employed in the PSWP research. Particularly, five dichotomous variables were created to tap into the nature and quality of the police-citizen encounters.

The results confirm the negativity bias theory that “bad is stronger than good,” suggesting that the negative-contact variables have stronger influences on PSWP than the positive-contact variables, net of neighborhood context and demographic background.

This study expands the scope of the investigation on PSWP by exploring the effects of the nature and quality of the police-citizen contacts on the respondents’ sentiments toward the police.

Online consumer reviews (OCRs) have emerged as a particularly important type of user-generated information about a brand because of their widespread adoption and influence on consumer decision-making. Much of the existing OCR research focuses on quantifiable OCR features such as star ratings and volume. More research that examines the influence of review elements, aside from numeric ratings, such as the verbatim text, particularly in services contexts is needed. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of service failures on consumer arousal and emotions.

The authors present three behavioral experiments that manipulate service failure and linguistic elements of OCRs by using galvanic skin response, survey measures and automated facial expression analysis.

Negative OCRs lead to the greatest levels of arousal when consumers read OCRs. Service failure severity impacts anger, and referential cohesion, an observable property of text that helps a reader better understand ideas in the text, negatively moderates the relationship between service failure severity and anger.

The authors are among the first to empirically test the effect of emotional contagion in a user-generated content context, demonstrating that it can occur when consumers read such content, even if they did not experience the events being described. The research uses a self-report and physiological measures to assess consumer perceptions, arousal and emotions related to service failures, increasing the robustness of the literature. These findings contribute to the marketing literature on OCRs in service failures, physiological measures of consumers’ emotions, the negativity bias and emotional contagion in a user-generated content context.

The purpose of this study was to investigate consumer preference formation in presence of reviews coming from traditional and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) under different conditions of review valence.

Scenario-based experimental design was used for this study. A total of 172 respondents were randomly assigned across four experimental scenarios and a control group. Across-groups comparisons were conducted using post hoc Dunnett’s test for checking the hypothesis.

The study revealed that negativity bias impacted consumer judgement formation to such an extent that positive valence from higher credibility source (WOM) is over-powered by negative reviews from lesser trusted source (eWOM). Further, a negative valence review from higher credibility source (WOM) may not be countered even in presence of consensus of positive valence review coming from a higher number of positive eWOM.

This study contributes to existing literature by examining consumer preference behaviour in presence of reviews coming from traditional and eWOM under different conditions of review valence. While earlier studies have examined individual role of WOM and eWOM under differing valence conditions, this paper extends literature by studying combined effect of WOM and eWOM under different review valence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of microblogging word of mouth (MWOM) through twitter on value co-destruction for Athens, as a tourism destination facing a sustained crisis. The study demonstrates the sentiment and sharing evolution of tweets, illustrating the value co-destruction of a tourism destination. Overall, the study expands understanding on the online footprints of MWOM in the field of tourism.

It uses social media focused data mining and sentiment analysis, to analyze more than 90,000 tweets posted by top twitter influencers between 2013 and 2015. The methodology that the authors have adopted follows seven steps: first, identification of the top-5 twitter influencers who use the hashtag #Athens, based on their klout score; second, collection of tweets from the top-5 twitter influencers, for the period from January 2013 until June 2015; third, collection of the retweets metadata of the above tweets and of the corresponding retweeter accounts (i.e. user id, name, screen name), together with the frequency of retweeting per tweet; fourth, collection of user metadata (i.e. location and number of followers) from the retweeter accounts; fifth, influence computation of retweetwers using their klout score; sixth, tweets classification based on the klout score of their retweeters; and seventh, sentiment analysis of the collected tweets.

The findings show the high potential of value co-destruction in virtual environments, through negative MWOM related to tourism destinations in crisis, and shared among highly influencing users, that disseminate negative stories through microblogging. The findings also reveal the existence of negativity bias that can reduce the risks of visiting a new destination facing a crisis and, at the same time, significantly destroy the destination’s value.

This is the first study to examine the impact of MWOM through twitter on a tourism destination facing a sustained crisis, such as Athens. This study uses social media focused data mining and sentiment analysis, to analyze more than 90,000 tweets posted by top twitter influencers between 2013 and 2015. The findings reveal the existence of negativity bias that can reduce the risks of visiting a new destination facing a crisis and, at the same time, significantly destroy the destination’s value.

The interest of food consumers in improved quality, healthiness, freshness, and authenticity results in a growing introduction of new food products featuring a variety of “positive” (e.g. “Enriched with Vitamin D”) and “negative” (e.g. “Low in Fat”) label claims. It's the goal of this paper to uncover how the presence of positive and absence of negative benefits or attributes balance in the minds of consumers, determine which label claims would have the greatest impact on consumers' intention to buy milk, and understand the role of stating these in either a positive or a negative frame.

To achieve the objectives of this paper, we utilize (1) descriptive study to identify which claims are currently used by the dairy marketing practitioners, (2) focus group to identify the importance of positive and negative product claims, and (3) online survey including discrete choice experiment (DCE) to determine the effect of positive and negative claims on consumer food choices.

We provide evidence of negative bias in consumers facing the choice between foods with enriched positive ingredients vs foods that are free-from negative ingredients. Specifically, we find that consumers have a general tendency toward giving negative attributes more weight than positive ones.

The research was conducted in one food category.

This research should encourage food marketers to include more positive statements about their products rather than the current focus on negatives such as no GMOs or no hormones. the authors understand these negative attributes need to be made but there should also be positive attributes.

Consumers will get a total picture of the product values and not skewed to one point.

The concept of negative bias has not be adequately explored in the food category on product labels.

Many online review sites, such as TripAdivisor.com, encourage review posters to upload a profile photo to improve the perceived reliability of online reviews. This study aims to examine the roles of reviewer profile photos in the online review generation and consumption processes.

Data were collected via Amazon MTurk. Two experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 had a sample size of 106 respondents. In Study 1, this paper examined the role of a reviewer profile photo in the online review generation process. Study 2 had a sample size of 482 respondents. In Study 2, this paper examined the role of a reviewer profile photo in the online review consumption process under two different circumstances, namely, comprehensive and incomprehensive review text.

The findings show that reviewer profile photos play different roles when consumers generate online reviews versus when they consume reviews. In the review generation process, reviewers are more likely to upload a profile photo to improve the credibility of their reviews. On the other hand, in the review consumption process, reviewer profile photos do not contribute to an increase in the perceived review helpfulness.

If the readers have difficulty processing the review content, review profile photos play a critical role in determining perceived review helpfulness. This study provides both theoretical and managerial implications by indicating how reviewer profile photos play different roles in online review posting and consuming behavior.

This study conceptualizes participatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a consumer empowerment strategy and examines the effect of participatory CSR on consumer responses in a social media setting.

This study uses a 2 (type of CSR campaign) × 4 (tone of consumer comments) between-subjects experimental design. The sample comprises college students and nonstudent participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Data indicate that the participatory CSR program leads to higher levels of perceived self-efficacy and social worth, which subsequently results in stronger intentions to spread positive word of mouth about the company’s CSR efforts. The findings suggest that participatory CSR has the power to boost a company’s reputation as an “admired” company through consumer empowerment.

This study advances the scholarship of CSR by explicating participatory CSR communication as a consumer empowerment strategy and providing empirical evidence for the effect of participatory CSR on public responses. The overall findings support the notion that CSR communication as an important function of public relations can generate public engagement with the organization and further co-create meaning with publics for mutual benefit.