A company often faces incidents in which its offerings cause bodily (e.g., product safety defects) or psychological (e.g., data breach) harm to its consumers. Such incidents may invoke product liability lawsuits against the company. The company may seek to recover from the liability-invoking failure by notifying the affected consumers, offering a remedy, and persuading them to comply with the company message. The authors theorize and experimentally demonstrate that, on average, a prevention-focused message receives greater compliance than a promotion-focused message. Further, a prevention-focused message is more effective with consumers from high uncertainty avoidance cultures, whereas a promotion-focused message is more effective in low uncertainty avoidance cultures. Perceived compatibility of prevention or promotion goals with low or high values of uncertainty avoidance mediates the interaction effect on compliance. The findings help companies overcome consumer apathy to product recall or data breach notices and offer managers ways to promote consumer safety and protection.

Customers are increasingly empowered in their interactions with firms. Sometimes they help firms but, unfortunately, they can also become “toxic” and hurt them. Customers are toxic when they engage in deliberate and potentially harmful acts towards a firm driven either by a reparatory or damaging mental state following a transgression. Whilst the existing literature has studied customers’ negative actions against organizations, critical questions remain as to how and why customers become toxic. We structure a fragmented field of research on customer toxicity and explore customers’ mental state before they decide to do nothing (non-complainers), avoid the brand, act against firms with either a reparatory mental state—and, thus, often constructive in nature (e.g., to initiate change)—or with a toxic mental state and destructive objectives (e.g., to harm and punish a firm). We highlight that the impact of these actions on a firm can still be “toxic” even without intention of harming and punishing. Furthermore, we outline the conceptual domain of customer toxicity and shift the focus from negative behavior to customers’ mental state, by integrating the marketing, aggression, and psychology literatures. We discuss the theoretical implications of our study and explore how future work may further examine organizations’ interactions with toxic customers. Finally, we provide managerial recovery techniques depending on customers’ mental state at a particular time.