In the era of digital retailing, consumer-empowering technologies greatly facilitate the dissemination of complaint messages. Consumer audiences, who view consumer complaints and the subsequent responses made by retailers, consider these messages as critical information sources for decision-making (Weitzl & Hutzinger, 2017). We argue that retailers can use two types of response strategies (warmth- vs. competence-related response) to regulate the information distributed online, and that these strategies may influence consumer audiences’ perceptions and subsequent attitudes and behaviors differently based on their different levels of power (Rucker, Galinsky, & Dubois, 2012). Two experimental studies using a 2 (retailer response: warmth vs. competence) X 2 (audience power: low vs. high) between-subjects design were conducted. Study 1 (N = 240) revealed an interactive effect of power and retailer response on perceived diagnosticity and perceived fairness; and Study 2 (N = 233) showed that the significant moderated mediation for audiences’ perceptions on the relationship between retailer response X audience power and outcome variables. Theoretically, this study enriches the consumer complaint management literature from the perspective of consumer audience. It also sheds light on the power theory by validating its notion in the context of service failure and recovery. Practically, results demonstrate how retailers can effectively respond to negative consumer reviews to maintain customer relationship management with consumer audiences in digital age.

Failure in servicing has detrimental effects upon customers, which can be translated into loss of resources. As such, this study employed the conservation of resources (COR) theory and developed a novel conceptualization that captures customers’ resource losses (after a failure), as well as their complaint process, by capturing dynamic loss, activation, and recovery of customers’ resources, in the case of a service failure. The use of online features and platforms for customers to voice their complaints was conceptualised as resource integration between the customer and the firm. The outcomes revealed online complaining as self-protective and selfenhancement behaviour. It is also unravelled in this study that various personal- and firm-related resource integrations in an online complaining context could result in varying emotional states and behavioural intentions among the affected customers towards the defaulting firm. These results open up an avenue for firms to devise effective intervention strategies.

Following a service failure, dissatisfied customers increasingly turn to brands’ social media outlets (e.g., Facebook brand page) to share their complaint with the involved company and other consumers. The majority of these other consumers (i.e., ‘recovery bystanders’) chooses to remain passive by simply observing the negative comment and the company’s attempt to restore the customer-brand relationship in public by means of ‘webcare’ (i.e., marketers’ communicative responses to online complaints (MIW); van Noort & Willemsen, 2011). For these observers the online service recovery process conveys valuable information for making purchase decisions. On the other hand, some consumers choose to become active, for instance, by making comments on the complaint or the company’s response and/or by ‘liking’ a comment (i.e., positive (brand-supportive) and negative (brand-unsupportive) ‘interactive virtual presence’ (IVP)). Given this interactive environment, recovery bystanders are exposed to strong social influence. Although recent research made some progress (e.g., Weitzl & Hutzinger, 2017), knowledge about the impact of this complex, social environment on recovery bystanders’ brand-related reactions remains scarce. In this study, we suggest that recovery bystanders’ level of susceptibility to normative influence (SNI) moderates the effect of different forms of webcare responses – accompanied by positive/negative IVP – on brand image. In 3 experiments (n = 1,387 consumers) we systematically manipulate response sources (i.e. ‘advocate-initiated webcare’ (AIW) vs. ‘marketer-initiated webcare’ (MIW)) and response types (study 1); interactive virtual presence via comments (positive IVP and negative IVP) (study 2) and Facebook ‘likes’ (positive IVP) (study 3). In explaining bystanders’ post-recovery evaluation of brand image we show that: Low-SNI bystanders, receiving AIW, as compared to MIW, show – regardless of webcare’s content – a significant increase. High-SNI bystanders, receiving AIW in the form of ‘vouching’ (i.e. an advocate counters a complaint with a ‘brand love story’) has the most pronounced effect – adding positive IVP (with additional, positive brand comments) even leads to a further improvement. However, adding negative IVP (with unfavorable brand comments) to marketer’s vouching reduced high-SNI bystanders’ image evaluation. Finally, when high-SNI bystanders receive advocate’s vouching and highly positive IVP (i.e., many ‘likes’), brand image evaluations significantly increase. This research draws scholars’ and practitioners’ attention to the opportunities – and perils – of cocreated service recoveries via social media.

As social media platforms (e.g., Facebook) and related online communication channels (e.g., review websites and community forums) grow in quantity and commercial orientation, marketing practitioners and scholars alike have recognised the importance of understanding and influencing online consumer communication processes. Specifically, it is suggested that online opinion leaders (‘Epinion leaders’) can be utilised as a target group to manage negative e-word-of-mouth (‘e-WOM’) and e-complaints. This study identifies and targets Epinion leaders and explores three central personality characteristics – altruism, self-confidence and the need for uniqueness – as a means of understanding Epinion leaders’ motivations to communication and tailoring corporate communication campaigns. The study focusses herby on the rapidly growing and increasingly influential 50-years+ e-commerce segment (i.e., ‘silver surfers’). Based on an online survey of 1,700 e-consumers aged 50 years and older, the proposed structural equation model verifies the positive influence of Epinion leadership on the propensity to spread negative e-WOM and e-complaints while demonstrating the applicability of personality characteristics as means of influencing consumers’ online communication strategies. The findings demonstrate that addressing consumers’ self-confidence can be an essential way of reducing negative e-WOM and encouraging e-complaints, which show opposing effects on customer satisfaction. For practitioners, this study emphasises the usefulness of negative Epinion leaders as a target group and recommends fostering consumers’ self-confidence in order to prevent negative online opinion-cascades and increase overall satisfaction.

Justice theory has emerged as a frequently used framework in theory and among service leaders to investigate reasons for customer complaints and their satisfaction with the handling of the complaint (Orsingher, Valentini, & Angelis, 2010; Tax, Brown, & Chandrashekaran, 1998). Whereas the complaint of a single customer used to be heard by only a small circle of acquaintances, with the rise of social media it can now be transferred to a large community of other customers as well. Theory suggests that justice perceptions might be able to explain the reactions of third parties to a complaint. Therefore, we analyze 400 complaints of 8 companies from 4 different retail and service industries and their related comments from a large German online complaint forum. We found that complaints addressing procedural justice issues receive the most attention and a lot of support from other users. Complaints regarding interactional justice, receive more opposition than support, evidenced by the negative comments from the other users. They seem to perceive the interactional complaints as less severe and even defend the company in many cases by attributing part of the blame to the complainant. Companies should consider these findings when they manage their complaint process and when they try to assess the criticality of complaints. In addition, this study once again confirms the danger of not reacting to customer requests in a timely manner as this can be interpreted by customers as intentionally ignoring them, which leads to positive reactions of other users and to solidarity with the complainant.