Feeding Comfort: The Role of Humor in Online Food Complaints

Abstract

This research examines the impact of tone mirroring in organizational responses to food complaints on social media. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory, two experiments explore how mirroring—matching the tone of the complaint, whether humorous or non-humorous—influences consumer emotions and intentions. The findings show that humorous responses to humorous complaints and non-humorous responses to non-humorous complaints significantly enhance psychological comfort among virtual observers (VPOs). This psychological comfort, in turn, increases purchase intentions and decreases the likelihood of negative word-of-mouth. However, in high-severity service failures, humorous mirroring is ineffective, as the severity of the service failure moderates the indirect effect of mirroring on consumer outcomes via psychological comfort. By highlighting mirroring—rather than humor alone—as a critical mechanism shaped by the severity of the service failure, this study extends our understanding of the role of humor in complaint management. The results offer both theoretical contributions and practical guidance for organizations managing food complaints on social media.