The Impact of Termination Severity on Customers’ Emotional, Attitudinal, and Behavioral Reactions

Purpose: This paper empirically examines the direct and indirect effects of perceived termination severity on customers' behavioral reactions via betrayal and justice. It also examines the moderating effects of attitude toward complaining (ATC). Design/methodology/approach: This paper employs a quantitative method approach using a scenario-based experiment in a banking setting. Findings: The results show that a more severe termination approach results in higher customer negative reactions. Betrayal is shown to be a key driver of customers' behavioral reactions, and ATC moderates these effects. Research limitations/implications: Future studies should examine the effects of different termination strategies in markedly different cultures and should also examine other boundary conditions such as prior warning, relationship quality and service importance in influencing customers' negative behavioral responses. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the service termination literature by shedding light on the impact of termination severity on customers' reactions. It also unveils the mechanism that explains customers' reactions to service termination. Further, it reveals that ATC moderates customers' public (but not private) complaining behaviors

A call to amplify the voices of people complaining against an ad

Offensiveness in advertising is both an individual and subjective experience for audiences. This is the case of advertising from the non-profit sector, which often needs to address difficult social, health or environmental issues in a bold and shocking way. Despite this, the regulatory process privileges advertiser justifications over the complaint itself. Kristina Auxtova argues that those who complain about ads should have more involvement throughout the complaint investigation process and should be consulted in the development of new codes

What does it take to get people fight against child poverty? : A cross-cultural comparison of consumer perceptions of controversial charity advertising

International and European BusinessIn order to break through the advertising clutter, many marketers currently use the element of shock to attract attention of their potential customers. Nevertheless, several significant research gaps have been identified: shock advertising has never been studied within the charity sector, and there has been very little research into charity advertising towards different cultures. Therefore, the present study, a novelty in its field, focused on the interaction between Charity, Culture and Controversy – the CCC relationship. It analysed consumer perceptions of controversial advertising, specifically in the charity sector. Moreover, a cross-cultural approach was taken in this analysis in order to compare these perceptions. An experimental quantitative research was conducted, using an online survey, subjecting the respondents to one of two poster advertisements – a shocking or an informational one. Firstly, it investigated the attitudes of a French student sample to these ads and it confirmed the hypothesis that upon viewing the shocking ad, the respondents are more likely to engage in charitable behaviour than upon viewing the informational one. Secondly, having widened the sample to 4 more countries – Slovakia, Chile, Germany and the UK, the study has proven that the nationality of respondents has a significant effect on the perceptions of the advertisements and consequently on the intentions or likelihood to engage in charitable behaviour. In terms of business implications, these findings give charities an insight into consumer perceptions of the UK model of shocking charity advertising that can be used as a basis to develop new innovative marketing campaigns