Hausmann, Maximilian

Mafael, Alexander

Niemann, Antje

Raithel, Sascha

Schweiger, Manfred

English

Institutional Repository of the Freie Universität Berlin

S a s c h a  R a i t h e l 1 ,  A l e x a n d e r  M a f a e l 1 ,  M a x i m i l i a n  H a u s m a n n 2,  A n t j e  N i e m a n n 2,  &  M a n f r e d  S c h w e i g e r 21 F r e i e  U n i v e r s i t ä t  B e r l i n2 L M U  M ü n c h e nSchool of Business & EconomicsMarketing-DepartmentThe Influence of Online Complaints on Third-Party ConsumersMotivation• Consumer frequently complain about products and services, both offline and online• Other consumers witness these complaints online and are also influenced by this negative information • We investigate how and through what process these “Third-party consumers” (TPCs) make sense of and are influenced by others’ complaints• We frame TPCs’ sense-making as a counterfactual thinking processEmpirical StudiesStudy 1: Estimating the impact of complaints on subsequent commentsStudy 2: Manipulate complaint content and measure TPCs’ counterfactual thoughtsStudy 3: Manipulate the involvement of the complainant in the failure situationDataSelected ResultsConclusions• Prior research has almost exclusively focused on the relationship between firm and complainant. We address this research gap with a conceptual model that predicts TPCs’ response to others’ complaints and proposes a sense-making process that informs their response• When the complainant is involved in the failure situation, TPCs tend to attack the complainant and defend the firm• Thus, moving complaints offline should not be firms’ knee-jerk reaction when facing complaints that motivate comments by TPCs1) Online complaint data from a public complaint forum consisting of complaints, comments to complaints, and firm responses2) Two behavioral experiments that illustrate a) TPCs’ cognitive process when witnessing a complaint and b) the influence of the complainant’s involvement in the failure situation on TPCs’ responseTable 1. Results for Study 1Table 1. Results for Study 3

The influence of online complaints on Third-Party Consumers

https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/bitstream/fub188/39514/1/Poster2019_02.pdf

The influence of online complaints on Third-Party Consumers

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Institutional Repository of the Freie Universität Berlin