Webcare’s effect on constructive and vindictive complainants
| Pages | 330-347 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-04-2018-1843 |
| Date | 13 May 2019 |
| Published date | 13 May 2019 |
| Author | Wolfgang J. Weitzl |
Webcare’s effect on constructive and
vindictive complainants
Wolfgang J. Weitzl
Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria and Department of Marketing,
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria
Abstract
Purpose –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.
Design/methodology/approach –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 ul timate complaining goals. Scenario-based online
experiment for cross-validating the survey findings.
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.
Research limitations/implications –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.
Practical implications –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.
Originality/value –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.
Keywords Service failure, Service recovery, Webcare, Online complaints, Negative word-of-mouth
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
After unsatisfactory brand experiences, consumers can easily
share their negative thoughts and feelings withmany others by
posting adverse comments on various online platforms
including social network sites(e.g. Facebook), microblogs (e.g.
Twitter) and discussion forums. Such written online
statements from dissatisfiedconsumers that denigrate a specific
brand (Laczniak et al.,2001) are basically a form of negative
electronic word-of-mouth (NeWOM). The reasons why
consumers engage in NeWOM are manifold. Extant literature
(Grégoire et al.,2015) suggests that NeWOM motives range
from constructive forms aimed at rebalancing the customer’s
relationship with the brand by seeking a problem solution to
more vindictive forms when complainants try to deliberately
harm the brand by calling on others not to buy it.
In the search for effective means to repair the relationship
with their dissatisfied customers and to mitigate negative
reactions of NeWOM observers –such as unfavorable brand
image evaluations, switching behavior and boycotting
(Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006)–many companies monitor
public online complaints and try to interfere them with
“webcare.”Van Noort and Willemsen (2012,p.133)define
webcare as “the act of engaging in online interactions with
[complaining] consumers, by actively searchingthe web to
address consumer feedback.”Eventhough webcare is generally
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
28/3 (2019) 330–347
Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-04-2018-1843]
© Wolfgang Weitzl. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article
is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0)
licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative
works of this article (for both commercialand non-commercial purposes),
subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full
terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/
by/4.0/legalcode
The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their
helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improve the
final version of the paper. In addition, the author thanks Sabine Einwiller
and Douglas Jewsbury for their feedback on the manuscript. This research
was financially supported by the University of Vienna, Faculty of Social
Sciences.
Received 5 April 2018
Revised 21 July 2018
21 September 2018
Accepted 21 September 2018
330
regarded as an effective way to anticipate negative effects
among (relatively uninvolved)observers (Lee and Song, 2010),
literature implies that (involved) complainants’brand-related
reactions to recovery attempts can differ substantially, ranging
from significant improvements in customer attitudes –when
recovery efforts are perceived as helpful –to a magnification of
the initial negative opinion or emotion (e.g. anger) –when the
company’s complaint handling efforts are regarded as
inappropriate or insincere (Homburg and Fuerst,2005;
Kaltcheva et al., 2013). Further, it has been shown that the
same recovery strategy that proves effective for some
consumers can be ineffective for others (Grégoire et al., 2009)
and that complainants’reactions to complaint handling can
vary even more dramatically online (Fournier and Avery,
2011).
This research argues that these variations in recovery
effectiveness can be explained by the complainant’s“webcare
receptiveness”that is the extent to which a complainant desires
and is favorably disposed to a corporate response that addresses
the cause of the online complaint. Accordingly, two types of
online complainants who differ in their receptiveness
toward online service recovery attempts can be identified:
Constructive complainants –whose personal or collective
complaining goals can only be achieved by receiving a response
from the company and who are therefore open (receptive) to
webcare; and Vindictive complainants –who do not need a
response from the company toachieve their goals and who
regard webcare rather as an inappropriate interference in
between-consumer-conversations.
While academic literature has longrecognized the benefits of
classifying complainants for improving recovery effectiveness
(Richins, 1983), knowledge about how to effectively provide
webcare to different online complainant-types is still scarce.
Consequently, the contribution of this article is two-fold: first,
it investigates thenature and characteristics of different types of
online complainants by exploring the varying personal and
collective goals they wantto achieve through voicing NeWOM;
second, more importantly, it identifiesthe role of complainant-
types for determining variations in the reactions to webcare
interventions. These insights are crucial to protect a brand’s
image in times of critical consumers who are empowered to
publicly voice their dissatisfactionon social media.
2. Conceptual background and hypotheses
2.1 Online complaining
Service failures are mistakes or problems that consumers
experience while purchasing or communicating with a brand
(Maxham, 2001). Such negative events lead to customer
dissatisfaction and customer complaint behaviors (e.g. direct
complaints), which often signal the collapse of the customer-
brand relationship.The emergence of social media has not only
enabled unsatisfied customersto share their experiences and to
provide feedback to the involvedbrand but also to inform other
consumers (Hennig-Thurau et al.,2010). Online complaining
is an expression of dissatisfaction for the purpose of drawing
attention to a perceivedmisconduct by a brand (or company) in
order to achieve personal or collective goals (Einwiller and
Steilen, 2015). These publiclyvisible consumer statements can
lead to negative brand evaluations, deteriorated brand
reputation and the dissemination of negative information
among its observers (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006;Verhagen
et al., 2013). On the other side, a growing number of studies
demonstrates that online complainingisrelated to unfavorable
brand-related reactions (e.g. future brand avoidance) by the
complainants themselves. Nevertheless, some recovery actions
(i.e. webcare) can help to mitigatesuch negative reactions (Kim
et al.,2016). Scholars have long emphasized the need to
categorize those who exhibit (online) complaining behaviors
based on their individual characteristics(Richins, 1983;Singh,
1990a), intentions (Hagedoorn et al., 1999)or response styles
(Schoefer and Diamantopoulos,2009a, 2009b) to improve
complaint handling by stimulating positive reactions (e.g. re-
establishing brand-favorableattitudes and brand advocacy). In
the online context, Lee and Song (2010) make a basic
differentiation between “complainers”(who post complaints),
“repliers”(who articulate their own opinion on the complaint
problem) and “observers”(who only read the complaint or
replies as interested,potential customers of the brand). Despite
the growing research focusing on NeWOM observers (Weitzl
and Hutzinger, 2017;Schamari and Schaefers, 2015),
surprisingly little research examines complainants’reactions
and how webcare affects the attitudes and intentions of
different types of onlinecomplainants.
In recent years, webcare literature (van Noort et al., 2014)
has made considerable contributions to our understanding of
online service recovery effectiveness. For instance, Grégoire
et al. (2009) find that high-relationship quality customers feel
betrayed when no recovery is offered.However, this feeling and
their desire forrevenge are greatly attenuated by an apologyand
a modest post-complaint recovery. In contrast, their research
also demonstratesthat low-relationship quality customers seem
to be more calculative and instrumentally oriented: Here, only
an expensive, high-recovery attempt has a mitigating effect on
customer revenge over time. More recently, Weitzl and
Einwiller (2018) identify three segments of online
complainants (i.e. “constructive, unattached customers”;
“constructive loyalists”;and“revengeful loyalists”) who differ
dramatically in pre-failure relationship status, complaining
desires and post-webcarereactions. Grégoire et al. (2018) make
a distinction between “vigilante complainers”(who frame the
problem as a task to be solved) and “reparation complainers”
(who frame the problem as a personal andpublic affront to be
avenged). Such findings suggest the need to consider different
types of complainants and the specific circumstancesof online
complaining (e.g. online complainants are often the “victims”
of multiple prior failures which regularly guides them to have
vivid desires for revenge and brand avoidance; Bonifield and
Cole, 2007)–when selecting the appropriaterecovery strategy
on the internet. The study at hand, extends this research by
introducing a typology that differentiates complainants with
respect to their underlying motives and the benefits sought
when engaging in NeWOM. We argue that the motive’s
goal element determines whether a person is receptive to
webcare (i.e. a company’s attempt to restore the customer–
brand relationship).Only if a response by the company helps to
achieve the complainant’s individual goals, he/she is receptive
to webcare and will react positively toward it. This assumption
is implicitly supported by earlier literature (He and Harris,
2014;Weitzl and Einwiller, 2018). However, a complaint–
Webcare’s effect
Wolfgang J. Weitzl
Journal of Product & Brand Management
Volume 28 · Number 3 · 2019 · 330–347
331
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