Pissed off at Wal-Mart, I needed a constructive way of releasing my frustration, so I bought a silly domain name and designed a Web site dedicated to my anger. I have created this site in retaliation against Wal-Mart for their crappy customer service and for treating their employees like s–t.
Anonymous Consumer 1
Hate is a very strong emotion that there are always some reactions come out from this emotion. Sooner or later, the consumer who feels hateful feelings can’t resist to act and reflect his/her frustration toward the brand and perhaps to whole market. Such hateful consumer reactions are now able to influence brand value and market preferences with the advancement in the Internet and networking technology. From a technological standpoint, individuals are now on the same footing with the corporation—the corporation has a Web site and so does the consumer, 2 and, in fact, in some situations, consumers are better broadcaster than their corporate counterparts. Thus, complaint and expression of negative emotions are easier than before, and it is clear that we couldn’t observe this level of consumer hate reflected in markets without technologic advancement in communication systems. But, the question remains “how consumers react to hated brand or how do they reflect their negative feelings toward the hated brand and markets?” And, of course, how does this hate influence market relationships and market by itself?
When consumers feel negatively about their brands, the first reaction might find a resolution with the brand and the company, and if that doesn’t work out well, they might eventually cut the relationship with brand and start retaliating the brand in order to feel better about themselves and hence try to reach self-served justice and inner peace. Such feeling of betrayal and poor treatment eventually lead to search for justice. Consumers either ask compensation or prefer retaliation if there is no fair resolution . During this process, such frustrated consumers will share their experiences with like-minded consumers and markets to make sense of their relationship with the brand. Some scholars classify these responses based on “destructive vs. constructive punitive actions ”, 3 and some others classify based on “direct vs. indirect revenge ”. 4
Destructive punitive actions focus more on consumer actions that aimed at directly harming the company and its brand by discrediting and talking badly about the company and brand. Bad mouthing the brand publicly and generating negative publicity by utilizing negative WOM about the brand suggesting not to but the brand can be associated with these kinds of punitive actions. On the other hand, constructive punitive actions are more aim at changing the company’s practices by maintaining and enhancing the relationships with the company by emailing company or organizing some temporary boycotts . The point is not to cut the relationship with the company but to teach the company its error. Consumers might end up participating collective movements such as boycotts and demonstrations in order to change the company’s conduct. From this point of view, destructive punitive actions can be associated with negative WOM whereas constructive punitive actions can be associated with directly complaining to the company (aka “voice response”) and boycotting. Similarly, negative WOM is also classified as indirect revenge behavior as consumers publicly complaining about the brand and company behind the company. On the other hand, direct revenge responses include vindictive complaining to company by getting into face-to-face confrontational responses such as insulting an employee, hitting an object, or slamming doors. These kinds of consumers can get easily angry as they think that this bad experience is so absurd that could be only happen in a joke not in the real life. For some, this situation can only be happened in a practical joke, and you hear the word “you got to kidding me” all the time. In a practical joke, the joker pushes his victim to an emotional edge until the victim can’t handle it anymore and totally loses his/her cool. Unfortunately, some companies are not purposely creating practical jokes but in fact truly pushing consumer to emotionally unknown edges that could only happen in a practical-joke setup. In these situations, consumer constantly goes back his/her perceptional justice and fairness equation in mind (as depicted in Fig. 2.1.) and can’t find a way to balance his equation out, and eventually explode to the service provider, company, brand, and everything represented by the company.
When consumer doesn’t receive a reasonable response from the company and turn berserk as a result, he/she simply exits the relationship or goes by own. That point company loses its control on the situation and consumers, and thus complaint can turn into a nasty negative WOM campaign and a boycott aim at hurting the company and brand. These behaviors are first discussed in Hirshman’s (1970) “Exit, Voice and Loyalty” theory. Hirshman indicates that dissatisfied consumers either voice their complaint to the company and/or then exit the relationship or cutting off their relationship with company and go away to create their own solutions. This is a direct rejection of the company and its brand is aimed at deleting the memories the brand from the consumer’s mind. However, the brand rejection decision is highly depended on the resolution outcomes of the consumer complaint . If resolution offerings are not satisfying enough for consumers, rejection impulses will trigger in two main responses as discussed in the theory: “avoidance ” and/or “revenge ”. 5 If this dissatisfaction is based on poorly performing products or services rather than CSI -oriented dissatisfaction , the hate might fade away over time. 6 Part of the reason, consumers need to give too much energy to continue this fight, and they prefer to avoid brands rather than constantly retaliating them 7 as also broadly discussed in consumer personality traits section. Overall, it is clear that major consumer reactions of brand hate can be discussed with consumer complaining literature as a direct revenge behavior, which includes negative, vindictive , and revengeful WOM , and boycotting or anti-consumption behaviors as a major consumption and brand avoidance response.
Consumer Complaining and Negative WOM
Scholars discuss that consumer brand hate could be a distinct and measurable subtype of consumer dissatisfaction . 8 Similarly, greater consumer dissatisfaction is likely to be related with greater consumer anti-branding and hate activities. 9 The studies also revealed that consumer dissatisfaction directly leads to consumer complaining behaviors 10 and negative WOM . 11 Thus, consumer dissatisfaction and hate can generate complain behaviors.
There are three main types of consumers complain behaviors were detected in the literature: “ voice response ”—complaining to the retailer, “ private response ”—talking to friends and relatives, and finally “third party responses”—such as writing to the Better Business Bureau. 12 The third-party responses are defined as “hard” actions , with voice and private responses as “easy” actions in the literature. 13 As private and third party responses use the sources outside the company, these responses are defined as direct revenge behaviors while voice responses can be considered as indirect revenge since the consumers are still trying to stay in company’s information loop. 14 With advent of the Internet technology, the easy actions are getting easier for majority of consumers. Furthermore, such private responses have now transformed into public response as a result of the Internet technology 15 as many private responses can be easily shared with everybody because of the Internet’s democratic architecture. On the other hand, third-party complainers are more willing to exert the effort to choose the “hard” action because they may believe businesses to be less responsive to complaints and feel it is necessary to voice their complaints when they are dissatisfied. 16 Thus, we started to see more consumers are complaining third-party institutions against the brand they hate . If a company can’t meet complaining consumers’ expectations, that would eventually generate strong negative emotions and hate toward the brand in macro-market level as well. In other words, the power and the form of consumer complaining behaviors have changed as a result of advancements in social networking sides. This, eventually, has transformed negative WOM behaviors as an alternative complaining mechanism. Negative WOM as a form of consumer complaining is so common in today’s digital markets that it is now almost impossible to not to run into a negative online consumer attacks or reviews when others are searching for products and services.
With the Internet, now there is a high transparency in the markets, everybody can see who is complaining about which brands and products as well as how companies are approaching such disgruntled consumers. This market transparency eventually significantly increased effectiveness and efficiency of negative consumer WOM campaigns in markets. In old times, WOM had no technologic aspect as many complaints were stuck in private conversations, and power of the WOM was mostly dependent on narrators’ trustworthiness. Nowadays, consumers can not only write about their dissatisfaction to their in-groups and/or in review boards but also disseminate strong counter-arguments against companies by creating their own brand hate and anti-branding symbols, pictures, and videos that reach majority of markets. Thus, the power of WOM is not solely depended on story teller’s trustworthiness but also supported with consumers’ pictorial and video evidences of the company’s failures that could sit at the heart of consumers’ hateful feelings. This also pushed the richness of consumer-generated anti-branding and brand hate semiotic into new levels as millions of consumers can easily access to such consumer-generated subvertisements (consumer-subverted advertisement) in real time. Consumers are no longer passively receiving whatever company and brand dictate, but actively changing the rhetoric for their benefits with their own creation of subvertisements and negative recommendations. Although such consumer-generated anti-branding semiotics and subvertisments will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, it is possible to see that one single can generate a mass negative WOM campaign and hurt company in the digital world. For example, when Dave Carroll, a musician, discovered that his guitar’s neck is broken because of baggage handling failure, he complaint to the airlines after his flight for compensation. 17 He tried about 9 months to resolve this issue by his own through using the airlines’ own consumer service channels, but he was not able to make an inch progress. As a result, he created a short music video and shared with fellow consumers. The video quickly reached 5 million of download in a month, and currently it is viewed more than 18 million people. Finally, the airlines compensated his damages, but it was too late to save the company from public humiliation .
As one of the major consequences of brand hate , negative WOM can be triggered by the majority of company-related brand hate antecedents (namely product/service failures and corporate social irresponsibility). 18 Consumers who found the brand deceptive, misleading, and perhaps intrusive will eventually get into business of generating and disseminating negative WOM about the hated brands. 19
In fact, such negative consumer voices and comments—a digital manifestation of consumer complaint and dissatisfaction —reach levels that might also harm the future idiosyncratic stock returns of firms. 20 Early cases revealed that bad experiences might spread much faster than good experiences in a form of negative WOM in the digital places as discussed with above case. Furthermore, studies showed that if the consumers had strong brand relationship with their brand, they would be more demanding with the company in service failure recovery efforts. 21 This, in turn, might increase the strength and volume of WOM. In other words, your consumers who loved your brand in the past might also easily turn to be hateful WOM machines attacking you daily bases. A recent research showed that the greater the love , the deeper the hate gets, 22 and thus the consumer who deeply loved your brands is also capable to hate your brand in the same magnitude or more if the brand fails. This, in turn, might emphasize and increase the legitimacy and the credibility of negative WOM .
Many of the anti-branding forums, Web sites, and discussion boards are used as major information media platform for liked-minded haters to stay up-to-date. 23 Furthermore, haters have now better chances to broadcast their hateful messages and influence whole market including neutral consumers because of the increasing digitalization and penetration of the social network sites in markets. For example, Dave Carroll’s guitar was broken because of the airlines’ poor baggage handling process before the Internet, his complaint wouldn’t go beyond a couple of friend’s daily conversations to the whole market and to the people many of them strangers to him. In other words, brand haters can go beyond their baseline audiences and access to neutral market audiences and actors. Thus, some neutral audiences can even be involved in generating negative WOM although they had no experiences with the brand or never purchased the brand before. Some of these consumers are simple influenced by the story raised with negative WOM, or simply following their close friends as consumer-generated WOM is generally perceived more credible that marketer-generated message on the Internet. 24 These types of consumers’ behaviors are similar to consumer type defined as “symbolic haters ” in the previous sections. For these consumers, hating a specific brand is like a fashion, they do it because their friends converted them to do so. Thus, the increasing numbers of symbolic haters are also strong indicator of successful recruiting capability of haters through utilizing negative WOM .
Overall, it can be indicated that consumer complaining and negative WOM is not new but consumer belief that things can eventually change in favor of consumers, and hence consumers can also make an impact on companies and markets for good is new and is possible now. Consumers are the one who are controlling the narrative in market messaging processes when it comes to negative events in many public outlets. Even a single person can generate a big wave of effective WOMs that can eventually affect company’s reputation, image, and, in fact, its operations negatively.
Consumer Boycotts
Some of the brand haters might have a deeper belief about the targeted brand and will not even be settled with complain recovery efforts. They will simply stop using the brand and involve in boycotting efforts. They might strongly believe that no matter what this brand does, it is not going to work out as they believe the brand is serving fundamentally corrupt and wrong philosophy. 25
In conventional boycott studies, some boycotts are defined as instrumental —they are used to influence the behavior of a firm by refusing to purchase or make use of its products 26 —e.g., boycott Nike until it stops using child labor. Other boycotts are more expressive in nature, allowing for the expression of discontent with a corporation’s actions—e.g., cut up Exxon cards after Valdez oil spill. 27 The form and degree of consumers’ brand hate , in fact, might determine the shape of the boycotting behavior.
Conventional boycott research has revealed that significant losses in stock prices for boycotted companies within a few months after the announcement of the boycott. 28 Findings also show that the most effective boycotts are those which place the most economic pressure and image pressure (via publicity) on the target, and when the target has little commitment to the policies which prompted the boycott. 29 The purpose of a boycott may be to alter the balance of power between interested parties, be that consumer groups, special interest groups, and/or corporations. 30 Similarly, most scholars have generally concluded that as boycott participation increases, the economic pressure on the target increases because of the greater number of severed exchange relationships. 31 In this context, anti-brand hate sites can create dramatic pressure on a brand image, can organize consumers not to buy the targeted brand, and inform consumers about the negative side of the corporate brands.
The Internet allows for simultaneous interactions and broadcasts to a huge audience of consumers, making it a highly effective medium for activism and the business of boycotting. Consumers are able to clearly broadcast their message and communicate with other like-minded individuals, which allow them to develop strong group identity and support for one another. These qualities transform a group of consumers into a social or political movement . 32 Today, consumers have many new online methods to support both offline protest activities and Internet-based protests or boycotts . On the Internet, activists can use technology to increase the efficacy of their offline demonstration in terms of organization and mobilization, such as using computerized mailing lists. Internet-based activism might include more proactive and aggressive online methods of protest such as cyberattacks, Web site defacements, virtual sit-ins, and massive e-mail campaigns . 33 Consumers can also now easily distribute petition against the brands among like-minded consumers and create social and economic pressure. Furthermore, many anti-branding hate sites provide detailed information about competitive alternatives. For instance, starbucked.com provides a list of locally owned coffee stores in all fifty American states. Microsuck.com lists several free and open-source alternatives to Microsoft software. Thus, anti-brand hate sites can be both expressive and instrumental as they channelize consumers to alternatives from the hated brand.
At this point, the question is which types of hate lead to a specific response. In other words, does any of the three-dimensional (cold, cool, and hot) brand hate stimulate any specific consumer reactions toward hated brand? Is it possible to expect to see voice responses from angry consumers? Or alternatively, is it possible to see any link between boycott and any types of brand hate components?
Brand hate behaviors
Boycott | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Negative WOM | Instrumental | Expressive | Instrumental + Expressive |
Private | Mild brand hate | Mild brand hate | Moderate brand hate |
Public | Moderate brand hate | Severe brand hate | Severe brand hate |
Private negative WOM has less capacity to influence other than consumers close in-groups as this kind of behavior is stuck within the in-group, and thus it has less powerful and indicates mild level brand hate . Even though this kind of negative WOM can be supported with boycotting behaviors, its impact can be limited unless such boycotting behaviors can operate in both instrumental and expressive , thus has potential and willingness to influence the audiences outside the in-group. In this context, private negative word might not be as impressive unless supported with both instrumental and expressive boycotting . That point, such behaviors can be result of moderate level of consumer brand hate as indicated in the intersection of the first row and the third column in Table 4.1.
Mild brand hate can be transformed into moderate brand hate if such negative emotions reach unbearable levels. The pain and outrage felt is too much that it can’t be handled only in-groups but should be shared with everybody. This is a typical defense mechanism. If such outrage can be brought to public, justice can be established by publicly bemoaning and punishing the hated brand. Thus, once the negative WOM goes from private to public, this, in turn, is an indication of elevation of consumer brand hate . If negative WOM can be operated with instrumental and expressive boycotts , it can indicate the moderate level of brand hate as such actions are on the public level. Similar to the discussion about private negative WOM behaviors, if negative public WOM is supported with both instrumental and expressive consumer boycott behaviors, that could indicate another level elevation in consumer brand hate . That is, in turn, is the result of a severe consumer brand hate . Consumers who are under such kind of severe brand hate will try to utilize every behavioral option to harm and hurt the brand. The behavioral consequences of this kind of brand hate are indicated at the intersection of the second row and third column in Table 4.1.
Companies need to decode the meaning of these behaviors and determine the level of consumer brand hate so that they can develop necessary damage plans. Any behavior goes from private to public and from just instrumental or expressive to both instrumental and expressive is an indication of strongly held brand hate or eruption of stronger consumer brand hate in markets. These consumers who are utilizing all forms of hateful reactions might be in the boiling or perhaps burning brand hate stages and should be handled very carefully. There are also some other consumers who can’t get over their hateful feelings toward the brand and try to hurt the brand through involving in criminal and unethical activities.
Illegitimate and Unethical Consumer Reactions
Although most of the consumers follow legitimate way of protesting the brand they hate , some others might not be able to control their temper and try to find illegitimate ways to hurt the brand. This kind of brand punishment goes beyond creating social pressure on brand through WOM or economic pressure through boycotts and other forms of anti-consumption movements. Such brand punishment can be harsher as there is less empathy can be felt toward an object (as brand) than person-to-person hate . These brand haters or I should call “brand criminals ” or “brand vandals ” thought that they can emotionally or physically hurt the brand as brands as an object has no feelings, cannot feel pain, and can’t fight back. These brand criminals are different than typical brand attackers or haters mentioned throughout this book as they go beyond all the social and legal norms. These criminal haters are not in a mission of developing instrumental nor expressive protest , but in a personal and vindictive punishment even it means to breaking the law to hurt the brand. 35 Vandalizing everything represented by the brand, or marketplace aggression in a form of physical attacks to service providers and anything represented by the brand is common among these kinds of consumers. This kind of uncontrolled and vicious hate could also be associated with extreme form of “burning brand hate ”. The difference from the severe brand haters , the level of hate is so strong that they don’t think that any social or legal rule can comprehend the pain they feel caused by the brand, and thus the company or brand shouldn’t eventually be left to run away without punishment. In these consumers’ mind, there could be only one solution; hurting the brand, even it means to steal from the company or physically attacking the employees and store features. This is easier than jumping lots of hoops to get their complaints put into company’s consumer service systems queue and not to hear from the company days. These consumers might also carry some passive-aggressive personality traits as they prefer to hurt the brand on their own terms even though they might not feel severe level brand hate .
Recently, shoplifting and return frauds are also included these kinds of illegitimate brand punishment behaviors. A research revealed that consumers are tending to shoplift more from the company they think harmful to the society to punish them. 36 This issue is directly related to corporate social irresponsibility concept which was also discussed as one of the major company-related brand hate antecedents in the previous sections. Thus, in general, one could claim that the higher the brand hate gets the more brand vandalism might also get. Interestingly, the same research showed that brand punishment in unethical means or consumer cheating increase even though the company does not even directly harm the consumer. If a consumer morally justifies the brand’s wrongdoings, the hate he/she feels toward the brand might lead him/her to cross the line and commit unethical and illegal behaviors no matter if the consumer is buyer or user of the brand. This is perhaps a valid case for the consumers who have high level awareness toward social problems and having hard time controlling their emotions. On the other hand, consumer personality disorder could also be another reason behind some of these unethical consumer behaviors as also discussed earlier under consumer-related brand hate antecedent subsection. Furthermore, consumers with low emotional stability , agreeableness , conscientiousness , and intellect; and with higher in extraversion personality traits might be more accepting shoplifting and unethical behaviors that aim at hurting companies. 37
Although it is believed that brand hate can directly hurt the brand’s intangible elements such as brand value and brand image, 38 these kinds of brand punishment and brand vandalism also indicate that brand hate also started to getting steam in hurting company’s tangible elements in modern shopping environments as well. A research revealed that about 20% of the followers of Wal-Mart anti-branding community is favor of stealing from Wal-Mart as they believe that Wal-Mart brand is evil and should be burnt down in hell . 39 However, I should point out that majority of brand haters do not follow this path even though we started to see increase in consumer shoplifting and wardrobing activities. Wal-Mart recently declared that they are losing 1% of their annual revenue to these kinds of activities, which equates to 3 billion dollars. 40 It is also possible that some of these consumers might actually love the brand but couldn’t effort it because of their low income. In other words, brand love could be another reason behind such shoplifting behaviors, and this issue is open more explorations. Although it is not clear how much of this loss are motivated by consumer hate toward brand or brand revenge , the number is still too big to ignore and gives a concrete example on how devastating brand hate could get.
Notes
- 1.
http://www.forbes.com/2005/03/07/cx_cw_0308hate.html, visited on January 5, 2016.
- 2.
Kucuk and Krishnamurthy (2007).
- 3.
Romani et al. (2013).
- 4.
Gregoire et al. (2010).
- 5.
Gregoire et al. (2009).
- 6.
Kucuk (2010).
- 7.
Gregoire et al. (2009).
- 8.
Carroll and Ahuvia (2006).
- 9.
Krishnamurthy and Kucuk (2009).
- 10.
Bearden and Teel (1983).
- 11.
Hegner et al. (2017).
- 12.
- 13.
Feick (1987)
- 14.
Gergoire et al. (2010).
- 15.
Ward and Ostrom (2006).
- 16.
Singh (1989).
- 17.
Tripp and Gregoire (2011).
- 18.
Hegner et al. (2017).
- 19.
- 20.
Luo (2007).
- 21.
Hess et al. (2003).
- 22.
Jin et al. (2017).
- 23.
Kucuk (2008).
- 24.
Bickart and Schindler (2001).
- 25.
Izberk-Bilgin (2010).
- 26.
- 27.
Gelb (1995).
- 28.
Pruitt and Friedman (1986).
- 29.
Garrett (1987).
- 30.
Gelb (1995).
- 31.
- 32.
Roper (2002).
- 33.
Sandor (2003).
- 34.
Romani et al. (2012).
- 35.
Johnson et al. (2011).
- 36.
Rotman et al. (2018).
- 37.
Egan and Taylor (2010).
- 38.
- 39.
Rotman et al. (2018).
- 40.
Matthwes (2015).