The face of contagion: consumer response to service failure depiction in online reviews

European Journal of Marketing

Volumn 52, Issue 1-2, 2018, Pages 39-65

  Fox, Alexa K ^a   Deitz, George D ^b   Royne, Marla B ^b   Fox, Joseph D ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AKRON   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS   (United States)

^c OHIO UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Automated facial expression analysis; Emotions; Galvanic skin response; Online reviews; User generated content

Indexed keywords

EID: 85041104488     PISSN: 03090566     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1108/EJM-12-2016-0887     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. Amould, E. and Price, L. (1993), “River magic: extraordinary experience and the extended service encounter”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 24-45.
2. Averill, J.R. (1982), Anger and Aggression: An Essay on Emotion, Springer, New York, NY.
3. Baker, J., Grewal, D. and Parasuraman, A. (1994), “The influence of store environment on quality inferences and store image”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 328-339.
4. Baker, J., Levy, M. and Grewal, D. (1992), “An experimental approach to making retail store environmental decisions”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 68 No. 4, pp. 445-461.
5. Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C. and Vohs, K.D. (2001), “Bad is stronger than good”, Review of General Psychology, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 323-370.
6. BazaarVoice (2015), “Social trends report”, available at: http://media2.bazaarvoice.com/documents/2015.12.NA.BV-SocialTrendsReport_DIGITAL.pdf (accessed 1 March 2016).
7. Bitner, M.J., Brown, S.W. and Meuter, M.L. (2000), “Technology infusion in service encounters”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 138-149.
8. Bohanek, J., Fivush, R. and Walker, E. (2005), “Memories of positive and negative emotional events”, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 51-66.
9. Bone, P.F. (1995), “Word-of-mouth effects on short-term and long-term product judgments”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 213-223.
10. Bonifield, C. and Cole, C. (2007), “Affective responses to service failure: anger, regret and retaliatory versus conciliatory responses”, Marketing Letters, Vol. 18 Nos 1/2, pp. 85-99.
11. Boucsein, W. (2012), Electrodermal Activity, Springer Science & Business Media, New York, NY.
12. BrightLocal (2015), “92% of consumers now read online reviews for local businesses”, available at: www.brightlocal.com/2015/08/20/92-of-consumers-now-read-online-reviews-for-local-businesses/ (accessed 1 March 2016).
13. Britton, B.K. and Gülgöz, S. (1991), “Using Kintsch’s computational model to improve instructional text: effects of repairing inference calls on recall and cognitive structures”, Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 83 No. 3, pp. 329-345.
14. Brown, J.J. and Reingen, P.H. (1987), “Social ties and word-of-mouth referral behavior”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 350-362.
15. Cacioppo, J.T., Gardner, W.L. and Bernston, G.G. (1997), “Beyond bipolar conceptualizations and measures: the case of attitudes and evaluative space”, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 3-23.
16. Chen, Z. and Lurie, N.H. (2013), “Temporal contiguity and negativity bias in the impact of online word of mouth”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 463-476.
17. Chevalier, J.A. and Mayzlin, D. (2006), “The effect of word of mouth on sales: online book reviews”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 43 No. 3, pp. 345-354.
18. Clore, G.L. (1992), “Cognitive phenomenology: feelings and the construction of judgment”, in Martin, L.L. and Tesser, A. (Eds), The Construction of Social Judgment, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 133-164.
19. Cohn, J., Ambadar, Z. and Ekman, P. (2006), “Observer-based measurement of facial expression with the facial action coding system”, in Coan, J.A. and Allen, J.B. (Eds), The Handbook of Emotion Elicitation and Assessment, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 203-221.
20. Darwin, C. (1872), The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Murray, London.
21. D’Mello, S.K. and Graesser, A. (2012), “Language and discourse are powerful signals of student emotions during tutoring”, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 304-317.
22. D’Mello, S.K., Dowell, N.M. and Graesser, A.C. (2009), “Cohesion relationships in tutorial dialogue as predictors of affective states”, in Dimitrova, V., Mizoguchi, R., du Boulay, B. and Graesser, A.C. (Eds), Proceedings of 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. Building Learning Systems that Care: From Knowledge Representation to Affective Modelling, IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp. 9-16.
23. DeSteno, D., Petty, R.E., Wegener, D.T. and Rucker, D.D. (2000), “Beyond valence in the perception of likelihood: the role of emotion specificity”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 78 No. 3, pp. 397-416.
24. Du, J., Fan, X. and Feng, T. (2011), “Multiple emotional contagions in service encounters”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 39 No. 3, pp. 449-466.
25. Duan, W., Gu, B. and Whinston, A.B. (2008), “Do online reviews matter? An empirical investigation of panel data”, Decision Support Systems, Vol. 45 No. 4, pp. 1007-1016.
26. Dunning, J., Pecotich, A. and O’Cass, A. (2004), “What happens when things go wrong? Retail sales explanations and their effects”, Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 21 No. 7, pp. 553-572.
27. Ekman, P. (1999), “Facial expressions”, in Dalgleish, T. and Power, M.J. (Eds), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, pp. 301-320.
28. Ekman, P. and Friesen, W.V. (1978), Facial Action Coding System: A Technique for the Measurement of Facial Movement, Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA.
29. Emotient (2015), “How to interpret CSV files”, available at: https://support.emotient.com/customer/portal/articles/1759399-how-to-interpret-the-csv-files (accessed 27 February 2015).
30. Feldman, J.M. and Lynch, J.G.,Jr. (1988), “Self-generated validity and other effects of measurement on belief, attitude, intention, and behavior”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 73 No. 3, pp. 421-435.
31. Fornell, C. and Larcker, D.F. (1981), “Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 39-50.
32. Frazer, J.G. (1922), The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Macmillan, New York, NY.
33. Frijda, N.H. (1986), The Emotions, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.
34. Graesser, A.C. and McNamara, D.S. (2011), “Computational analyses of multilevel discourse comprehension”, Topics in Cognitive Science, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 371-398.
35. Graesser, A.C., McNamara, D.S., Louwerse, M.M. and Cai, Z. (2004), “Coh-Metrix: analysis of text on cohesion and language”, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 193-202.
36. Hasford, J., Hardesty, D.M. and Kidwell, B. (2015), “More than a feeling: emotional contagion effects in persuasive communication”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 52 No. 6, pp. 836-847.
37. Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.T. and Rapson, R.L. (1994), Emotional Contagion, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.
38. Herr, P.M., Kardes, F.R. and Kim, J. (1991), “Effects of word-of-mouth and product attribute information on persuasion: an accessibility-diagnosticity perspective”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 17 No. 4, pp. 454-462.
39. Hess, R.L., Jr, Ganesan, S. and Klein, N.M. (2003), “Service failure and recovery: the impact of relationship factors on customer satisfaction”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 127-145.
40. Hill, D. (2003), Body of Truth: Leveraging What Consumers Can’t or Won’t Say, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
41. Hu, L. and Bentler, P.M. (1999), “Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: conventional criteria versus new alternatives”, Structural Equation Modeling, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 1-55.
42. iMotions (2014), Attention Tool Version 5.4 [Computer Software], iMotions, Cambridge, MA.
43. Jamrisko, M. (2015), “Americans’ spending on dining out just overtook grocery sales for the first time ever”, available at: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/americans-spending-on-dining-out-just-overtook-grocery-sales-for-the-first-time-ever (accessed 1 August 2016).
44. Jurafsky, D., Chahuneau, V., Routledge, B.R. and Smith, N.A. (2014), “Narrative framing of consumer sentiment in online restaurant reviews”, available at: http://uncommonculture.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4944/3863 (accessed 2 August 2015).
45. Kalamas, M., Laroche, M. and Makdessian, L. (2008), “Reaching the boiling point: consumers’ negative affective reactions to firm-attributed service failures”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 61 No. 8, pp. 813-824.
46. Kees, J., Berry, C., Burton, S. and Sheehan, K. (2017), “An analysis of data quality: professional panels, student subject pools, and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk”, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 141-155.
47. Kronrod, A. and Danziger, S. (2013), “Wii will rock you!’ the use and effect of figurative language in consumer reviews of hedonic and utilitarian consumption”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 40 No. 4, pp. 726-739.
48. Langner, T., Schmidt, J. and Fischer, A. (2015), “Is it really love? A comparative investigation of the emotional nature of Brand and interpersonal love”, Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 624-634.
49. Lau-Gesk, L. and Meyers-Levey, J. (2009), “Emotional persuasion: when the valence versus the resource demands of emotions influence consumers’ attitudes”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 585-599.
50. Lazarus, R.S. (1991), Emotion and Adaptation, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
51. Lazarus, R.S. and Cohen-Charash, Y. (2001), “Discrete emotions in organizational life”, in Payne, R.L. and Cooper, G.L. (Eds), Emotions at Work: Theory, Research, and Applications for Management, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, pp. 48-81.
52. Lee, J., Park, D.H. and Han, I. (2008), “The effect of negative online consumer reviews on product attitude: an information processing view”, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 341-352.
53. Lerner, J.S. and Keltner, D. (2000), “Beyond valence: toward a model of emotion-specific in consequences on judgment and choice”, Cognition and Emotion, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 473-493.
54. Lilien, G.L., Grewal, R., Bowman, D., Ding, M., Griffin, A., Kumar, V., Narayandas, D., Peres, R., Srinivasan, R. and Wang, Q. (2010), “Calculating, creating and claiming value in business markets: status and research agenda”, Marketing Letters, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 287-299.
55. Ludwig, S., de Ruyter, K., Friedman, M., Brüggen, E.C., Wetzels, M. and Pfann, G. (2013), “More than words: the influence of affective content and linguistic style matches in online reviews on conversion rates”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 77 No. 1, pp. 87-103.
56. McDuff, D., El Kaliouby, R. and Picard, R.W. (2012), “Crowdsourcing facial responses to online videos”, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 456-468.
57. McNamara, D.S., Crossley, S.A. and McCarthy, P.M. (2010), “Linguistic features of writing quality”, Written Communication, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 57-86.
58. McNamara, D.S., Graesser, A.C., McCarthy, P.M. and Cai, Z. (2014), Automated Evaluation of Text Discourse with Coh-Metrix, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.
59. McNamara, D.S., Kintsch, E., Songer, N.B. and Kintsch, W. (1996), “Are good texts always better? Text coherence, background knowledge, and levels of understanding in learning from text”, Cognition and Instruction, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 1-43.
60. McNamara, D.S., Louwerse, M.M., McCarthy, P.M. and Graesser, A.C. (2010), “Coh-Metrix: capturing linguistic features of cohesion”, Discourse Processes, Vol. 47 No. 4, pp. 292-330.
61. Moorman, C. (2014), “CMO survey report: highlights and insights”, available at: http://cmosurvey.org/results/survey-results-august-2014/ (accessed 7 January 2015).
62. Morales, A.C. and Fitzsimons, G.J. (2007), “Product contagion: changing consumer evaluations through physical contact with ‘disgusting’ products”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 44 No. 2, pp. 272-283.
63. MPlus (2014), “StatModel”, available at: www.statmodel.com/ (accessed 2November 2014).
64. Mudambi, S.M. and Schuff, D. (2010), “What makes a helpful online review? A study of customer reviews on amazon.com”, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 185-200.
65. Murray, K.B. (1991), “A test of services marketing theory: consumer information acquisition activities”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 55 No. 1, pp. 10-25.
66. Muthén, L.K. and Muthén, B.O. (2012), Mplus User’s Guide, 7th ed., Muthén & Muthén, Los Angeles, CA.
67. Nelson, P. (1974), “Advertising as information”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 82 No. 4, pp. 729-754.
68. Ohme, R., Reykowska, D., Wiener, D. and Choromanska, A. (2010), “Application of frontal EEG asymmetry to advertising research”, Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 31 No. 5, pp. 785-793.
69. Oliver, R.L. and Swan, J.E. (1989), “Consumer perceptions of interpersonal equity and satisfaction in transactions: a field survey approach”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 53 No. 2, pp. 21-35.
70. Pennebaker, J.W., Zech, E. and Rimé, B. (2001), “Disclosing and sharing emotion: psychological, social, and health consequences”, Handbook of Bereavement Research: Consequences, Coping, and Care, pp. 517-543.
71. Racherla, P. and Friske, W. (2012), “Perceived ‘usefulness’ of online consumer reviews: an exploratory investigation across three services categories”, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Vol. 11 No. 6, pp. 548-559.
72. Riener, C., Stefanucci, J.K., Proffitt, D. and Clore, G. (2003), An Effect of Mood on Perceiving Spatial Layout, Vision Sciences, Sarasota, FL.
73. Roehm, M.L. and Brady, M.K. (2007), “Consumer responses to performance failures by high-equity brands”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 537-545.
74. Roseman, I.J. (1991), “Appraisal determinants of discrete emotions”, Cognition and Emotion, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 161-200.
75. Rozin, P. and Royzman, E.B. (2001), “Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion”, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 296-320.
76. Rozin, P., Haidt, J. and McCauley, C.R. (1999), “Disgust: the body and soul emotion”, in Dalgleish, T. and Power, M.J. (Eds), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion, Wiley, New York, NY, pp. 429-445.
77. Sadoski, M., Goetz, E.T. and Fritz, J.B. (1993), “Impact of concreteness on comprehensibility, interest, and memory for text: implications for dual coding theory and text design”, Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 85 No. 2, pp. 291-304.
78. Sajtos, L., Brodie, R.J. and Whittome, J. (2010), “Impact of service failure: the protective layer of customer relationships”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 216-229.
79. Satorra, A. and Bentler, P.M. (2001), “A scaled difference chi-square test statistic for moment structure analysis”, Psychometrika, Vol. 66 No. 4, pp. 507-514.
80. Senecal, S. and Nantel, J. (2004), “The influence of online product recommendations on consumers’ online choices”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 80 No. 2, pp. 159-169.
81. Small, D.A. and Verrochi, N.M. (2009), “The face of need: facial emotion expression on charity advertisements”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 46 No. 6, pp. 777-787.
82. Smith, A.K., Bolton, R.N. and Wagner, J. (1999), “A model of customer satisfaction with service encounters involving failure and recovery”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 356-372.
83. Sparks, B.A. and Browning, V. (2011), “The impact of online reviews on hotel booking intentions and perception of trust”, Tourism Management, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 1310-1323.
84. StataCorp (2013), Stata Statistical Software: Release 13 [Computer Software], StataCorp LP, College Station, TX.
85. Storbeck, J. and Clore, G.L. (2007), “On the interdependence of cognition and emotion”, Cognition and Emotion, Vol. 21 No. 6, pp. 1212-1237.
86. Sultan, A.J., Joireman, J. and Sprott, D.E. (2012), “Building consumer self-control: the effect of self-control exercises on impulse buying urges”, Marketing Letters, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 61-72.
87. Tang, C. and Guo, L. (2015), “Digging for gold with a simple tool: validating text mining in studying electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication”, Marketing Letters, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 67-80.
88. Tausczik, Y.R. and Pennebaker, J.W. (2010), “The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods”, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 24-54.
89. Taylor, S.E. (1991), “Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: the mobilization–minimization hypothesis”, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 110 No. 1, pp. 67-85.
90. Teixeira, T., Wedel, M. and Pieters, R. (2012), “Emotion-induced engagement in internet video advertisements”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 49 No. 2, pp. 144-159.
91. Thomas, M. (2014), “What is the average reading speed and the best rate of reading?”, available at: www.healthguidance.org/entry/13263/1/What-Is-the-Average-Reading-Speed-and-the-Best-Rate-of-Reading.html (accessed 27 February 2015).
92. TripAdvisor (2015), “Fact sheet”, available at: www.tripadvisor.com/PressCenter-c4-Fact_Sheet.html (accessed 1 March 2016).
93. Trusov, M., Bucklin, R.E. and Pauwels, K. (2009), “Estimating the dynamic effects of online word-of-mouth on member growth of a social network site”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 73 No. 5, pp. 90-102.
94. Vermeulen, I.E. and Seegers, D. (2009), “Tried and tested: the impact of online hotel reviews on consumer consideration”, Tourism Management, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 123-127.
95. Weun, S., Beatty, S.E. and Jones, M.A. (2004), “The impact of service failure severity on service recovery evaluations and post-recovery relationships”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 133-146.
96. Wu, P.F. (2013), “In search of negativity bias: an empirical study of perceived helpfulness of online reviews”, Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 11, pp. 971-984.
97. Xia, L. and Bechwati, N.N. (2008), “Word of mouse: the role of cognitive personalization in online consumer reviews”, Journal of Interactive Advertising, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 3-13.
98. Ye, Q., Law, R. and Gu, B. (2009), “The impact of online user reviews on hotel room sales”, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 180-182.
99. Yin, D., Bond, S. and Zhang, H. (2014), “Anxious or angry? Effects of discrete emotions on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews”, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 38 No. 2, pp. 539-560.
100. Zajonc, R.B. (1980), “Feeling and thinking: preferences need no inferences”, American Psychologist, Vol. 35 No. 2, pp. 151-175.
101. Zeithaml, V.A., Berry, L.L. and Parasuraman, A. (1993), “The nature and determinants of customer expectations of service”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 1-12.