{"title":"Brand warmth elicits feedback, not complaints","authors":"","doi":"10.1007/s11747-024-01009-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>Consumers perceive brands on their intended goals that can benefit or harm consumers. These warmth perceptions become consequential when a consumer experiences a product-harm incident. Conventional wisdom suggests that brand warmth may inhibit consumers from reporting such incidents to the brand and/or regulators. However, the authors’ analyses of field data show that brand warmth increases the number of reports of harm incidents. Yet consumers’ underlying motive is to provide feedback rather than complain. Indeed, using machine learning and regressions, and laboratory experiments, the authors demonstrate that brand warmth boosts the proportion of feedback (vs. complaint) reports. Next, they theorize and show that brand warmth induces consumer benevolence, which drives the consumer toward feedback (vs. complaint). Lastly, the authors demonstrate that if managers of a warm brand acknowledge the consumer’s feedback motive in their recovery messages, such acknowledgement enhances consumer satisfaction. The research extends the discipline’s knowledge on how a brand’s warmth perceptions impact consumers’ responses in the aftermath of a product-harm incident and what intervention managers can use in such a context.</p>","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01009-w","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Consumers perceive brands on their intended goals that can benefit or harm consumers. These warmth perceptions become consequential when a consumer experiences a product-harm incident. Conventional wisdom suggests that brand warmth may inhibit consumers from reporting such incidents to the brand and/or regulators. However, the authors’ analyses of field data show that brand warmth increases the number of reports of harm incidents. Yet consumers’ underlying motive is to provide feedback rather than complain. Indeed, using machine learning and regressions, and laboratory experiments, the authors demonstrate that brand warmth boosts the proportion of feedback (vs. complaint) reports. Next, they theorize and show that brand warmth induces consumer benevolence, which drives the consumer toward feedback (vs. complaint). Lastly, the authors demonstrate that if managers of a warm brand acknowledge the consumer’s feedback motive in their recovery messages, such acknowledgement enhances consumer satisfaction. The research extends the discipline’s knowledge on how a brand’s warmth perceptions impact consumers’ responses in the aftermath of a product-harm incident and what intervention managers can use in such a context.
期刊介绍:
JAMS, also known as The Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between scholarly research and practical application in the realm of marketing. Its primary objective is to study and enhance marketing practices by publishing research-driven articles.
When manuscripts are submitted to JAMS for publication, they are evaluated based on their potential to contribute to the advancement of marketing science and practice.