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This paper aims to identify the ways that customers respond to customer-to-customer comparisons that may drive loyal customers to engage in undesirable behaviors. The research examines the role that jealousy and envy play in restoring equity through revenge-seeking intentions.

The study uses survey research methodology. The measurement model is validated using CFA, and hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling. The mediated relationships are calculated using the bootstrap method, and moderated mediation is calculated by creating estimands to test the effects.

Customers who feel either jealousy or envy may engage in revenge-seeking behaviors, such as vindictive complaining and negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Customers who perceive that a firm is unfairly favoring other customers develop feelings of jealousy and betrayal, and this tendency is strengthened when the customer has a high level of prior trust. Customers typically develop envy when their attention and perceptions of inequity center on another customer, rather than on the firm’s actions and anger drives this effect.

Customers can pursue revenge-seeking actions when unfair actions influence the formation of envy and jealousy through the development of perceived betrayal. Companies can focus on the comparisons that customers make to address revenge-seeking and better manage online relationships preemptively.

The paths that customers take to revenge through jealousy and envy are conceptualized in a communal relationship setting and further developed. Further distinctions of jealousy and envy are made, and the role of prior trust in enhancing revenge-seeking is found.

This study aims to identify the impact that Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy tendencies have on avoidance and revenge-seeking after a service failure. The research examines the role that negative affect and desire for revenge play in aggressive behaviors by consumers.

The study uses a survey research methodology. The measurement model is validated using CFA, and hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling. The mediated and serially mediated relationships are calculated using the bootstrap method by creating estimands to test the effects.

Machiavellianism is less likely to drive avoidance and negative affect, reducing desire for revenge, negative word of mouth and vindictive complaining. Those with narcissism tendencies are likely to develop a negative affect and a corresponding desire for revenge after the failure only if negative affect is developed. Consumers who exhibit psychopathy tendencies are likely to seek out revenge directly.

Each Dark Triad tendency influences consumer avoidance and revenge-seeking in different ways when a consumer’s goals are impeded. Companies can focus on service recoveries differently based on the types of tendencies of consumers engaging in avoidance and revenge-seeking.

The individual paths from Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy tendencies to avoidance and revenge-seeking are developed and analyzed. Further distinctions between each Dark Triad tendency aids service providers in addressing and preparing for these consumer behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore client‐reported functions of deliberate self‐injury for prisoners located within a dangerous and severe personality disorder site.

As interviews produced in‐depth data indicating a very idiosyncratic experience of the function of deliberate self‐injury, interpretative phenomenological analysis was used within a small‐scale case study design.

Identified functions mirrored current quantitative research but few emerging themes were identified across the sample. Participants presented with varying levels of insight into their deliberate self‐injury.

A small sample of young males was used within the study.

A “status‐seeking” function of deliberate self‐injury was also observed, which is not explicitly discussed within the current literature base. This study's findings can be of use to treatment providers for this population given their complex responsivity needs.

Deepfakes are fabricated content created by replacing an original image or video with someone else. Deepfakes have recently become commonplace in politics, posing serious challenges to democratic integrity. The advancement of AI-enabled technology and machine learning has made creating synthetic videos relatively easy. This study explores the role of political brand hate and individual moral consciousness in influencing electorates' intention to share political deepfake content.

The study creates and uses a fictional deepfake video to test the proposed model. Data are collected from N = 310 respondents in India and tested using partial least square–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS v3.

The findings support that ideological incompatibility with the political party leads to political brand hate, positively affecting the electorates' intention to share political deepfake videos. This effect is partially mediated by users' reduced intention to verify political deepfake videos. In addition, it is observed that individual moral consciousness positively moderates the effect of political brand hate on the intention to share political deepfake videos. Intention to share political deepfake videos thus becomes a motive to seek revenge on the hated party, an expression of an individual's ideological hate and a means to preserve one's moral self-concept and strengthen their ideologies and moral beliefs.

The study expands the growing discussion about disseminating political deepfake videos using the theoretical lens of the negative consumer-brand relationship. It validates the effect of political brand hate on irrational behavior that is intended to cause harm to the hated party. Further, it provides a novel perspective that individual moral consciousness may fuel the haters' desire to engage in anti-branding behavior. Political ideological incompatibility reflects ethical reasons for brand hate. Therefore, hate among individuals with high moral consciousness serves to preserve their moral self.

The purpose of this paper is to use the concept of brand hate as part of an exploratory study in order to investigate the antecedents and consequences of extreme negative affect within the food category.

The authors employed a mixed research design. A short survey of 324 French business school students identified Starbucks as the most hated food brand (measured in terms of frequency of mentions). In total, 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants who had identified Starbucks as a hated brand.

The research study found that not all consumers feel brand hate at the same level and so-called haters expressed differing severity of hate towards Starbucks, i.e. cold, warm and hot brand hate. Findings revealed that the antecedents of extreme negative affect are to a certain extent dependent on the intensity of brand hate. Consumer reactions were discussed in terms of attachment–aversion relationships which were categorised according to soft and hard brand hate.

Future research is required to broaden the conceptual scope of brand hate as a construct and apply it in other domains of research, as well as further clarify antecedents and potential outcomes. The authors accept that the study is limited and specific to Starbucks in France. Further research should therefore broaden the scope of context in which brand hate occurs, for example, expanding the geographical scope of the work to other countries and to other food- and drink-related brands. The authors also accept that the study reflects a relatively homogeneous sample and is thus not representative of the general population.

Brand managers need to recognise the risk that brand hate will not only distance former customers, but also spread to existing and future customers. Food brand executives need to therefore consider approaches to address the causes and effects of brand hate.

Brand hate within the literature is a very recent phenomenon and studies remain rare. The rise of the so-called activist consumer is an emerging phenomenon within the food sector. The discussion of brand hate within a food context represents a new avenue of research.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to broaden the understanding of the three negative member (bad apple) behaviors – withholding of effort, interpersonal deviance and negative affect – put forth by Felps et al. (2006).

An integrative review of extant literature was conducted to understand the impact of the negative member behaviors on other team members. Potential interventions to control this bad apple behavior are identified with supporting evidence from recent empirical studies.

A review of empirical findings in the literature indicate that perceived coworker loafing may lead to counterproductive work behavior toward coworkers and interpersonal deviance may affect the task cohesion of the group. However, the presence of affectively negative individuals is empirically proven to improve the group performance, especially when the group task is related to creativity or information processing (decision-making and idea generation).

Despite the empirical attention paid to “bad apple” behaviors, the implications for managing negative member behaviors are unclear and scattered. In this paper, building on the framework proposed by Felps et al. (2006), the authors focus on three behaviors and provide a concise review of literature and interventions to control or exploit these behaviors.

The purpose of this study aims to investigate the independent and combined moderating effects of social sharing and rumination on the relationship between customer aggression and service sabotage.

Two samples of service providers were recruited: a sample of face-to-face service employees from various organizations (N = 481) and a sample of call center employees (N = 122). Data were collected using self-reported questionnaires and the research hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analyses.

The impact of customer aggression on service sabotage was exacerbated by rumination in Sample 1 and although failing to reach significance (0.08), the same pattern of interaction was observed in Sample 2. The results lend support to the existence of a three-way interaction effect between customer aggression, social sharing and rumination. Specifically, the positive relationship between customer aggression and service sabotage was stronger for employees who reported high levels of both social sharing and rumination compared to employees who reported high levels of social sharing but low levels of rumination.

Implementing stress-management training intended to help service employees avoid using maladaptive coping strategies when confronted with mistreatment can serve to reduce employees’ engagement in retaliatory behaviors directed against customers.

The study’s findings provide one potential explanation for the mixed findings in the literature on social sharing and suggest that sharing of emotions for coping with customer aggression may become a maladaptive strategy for individuals who tend to engage in ruminative thinking whereas it may be a helpful coping choice for individuals who do not.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of empathy and apology in service recovery, and more specifically, establish how these factors promote positive service outcomes, typified by reconciliation and mitigate negative occurrences, characterised by customer retaliation and avoidance.

This study used an online panel to collect data from 213 US residents, who were asked to recall a service failure episode they experienced within the past six months, write briefly about it and answer a questionnaire measuring constructs of interest in relation to their previous experience. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the quantitative data.

Both service employee empathy and apology were found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between service failure severity and reconciliation, retaliation and avoidance.

The combination of empathy and apology as moderators into a single framework represents a unique contribution of this research. Furthermore, outcome variables of reconciliation, retaliation and avoidance are utlilized to measure relationship outcomes following service failure. This study highlights the need for managers to design hiring and training policies to promote empathy and the use of sincere apologies throughout customer interactions.

Consumer–brand relationship literature has seen a recent surge of work on the concept of brand hate. Considering that hate is not easily acknowledged, it is challenging to uncover the psychological mechanisms that underpin its development. Using the concept of “self” as over-arching theory, this study aims to uncover consumers’ psychological triggers for hating a brand by providing contextualized perspectives from the informants.

The authors use an interpretive approach focused on exploring the role of self in explaining the development of brand hate. Data is collected through 25 in-depth interviews and inductively analysed using the NVivo 12.

The findings of the study align with the motivational perspective of hate discussed in psychology literature. Six psychological strategies (coping, moral consciousness, ego defense, self-esteem protection, power reinstatement, and self-concept strengthening) cater to three motives of the self (self-preservation, self-defense, and self-enhancement).

The current study uses an interdisciplinary approach and draws perspectives from psychology, sociology and interpersonal relationship theories to study consumer brand hate. It uncovers the subconscious mechanisms that lead to the germination of brand hate and provides answers to unexplained and missing pieces in the existing literature. In particular, it offers a detailed perspective on how self-related motives can explain the psychology of brand hate.

The purpose of this study is to operationalise and measure the effects of negative customer engagement (CE) in conjunction with positive CE. Both valences are explored through affective, cognitive and behaviour dimensions, and, in relation to the antecedent of involvement and outcome of word-of-mouth (WOM). It also explores the moderating influence of service context by examining engagement within a social service versus a social networking site (SNS). Engagement with the dual focal objects of a service brand and a service community are also examined.

Structural equation modelling is used to analyse 625 survey responses.

Involvement is a strong driver of positive CE, and positive CE has a strong effect on WOM. These findings are consistent across the “brand” and “community” object, suggesting positive CE is mutually reinforced by different objects in a relationship. Positive CE is also found to operate consistently across the service types. Involvement is a moderately negative driver of negative CE, and negative CE is a positive driver of WOM. These relationships operate differently across the objects and service types. Involvement has a stronger inverse effect on negative CE for the social service, diverging from assumptions that negative CE is reflective of highly involved customers. Interestingly, negative CE has a stronger effect on WOM in the social service, highlighting the active and vocal nature of customers within this service context.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to quantitatively measure positive and negative valences of engagement concurrently, and examine the moderating effect of dual objects across contrasting service types.