Customer betrayal and retaliation: when your best customers become your worst enemies

Abstract

After a service failure and a poor recovery, what leads loyal customers to try to punish a firm even if there is no material gain for doing so? We propose and test a justice-based model that incorporates perceived betrayal as the means to understand customer retaliation and the "love becomes hate" effect. The results suggest that betrayal is a key motivational force that leads customers to restore fairness by all means possible, including retaliation. In contrast to the majority of findings in the service literature, we propose and find that relationship quality has unfavorable effects on a customer's response to a service recovery. As a relationship gains in strength, a violation of the fairness norm was found to have a stronger effect on the sense of betrayal experienced by customers. The model was tested on a national sample of airline passengers who complained to a consumer agency after an unsuccessful recovery.

Unfairness in consumer services: Outcomes of differential treatment of new and existing clients

“…Research shows that when different conditions are offered to current and prospective customers, the former perceive higher unfairness and a sense of betrayal if they receive the less favourable treatment (Feinberg et al, 2002;Tsai and Lee, 2007). The negative reaction is mainly due to their attachment to the firms and their products (Weisstein et al, 2013) and higher expectations of the retailer (Grégoire and Fisher, 2008;Martin et al, 2009). In addition, fairness judgments tend to be biased by customers' self-interest (Nguyen and Simkin, 2013).…”

“…According to equity theory, when a better price is offered to a customer, this has a negative impact on other similar non-targeted customers' perception of their relative outcome to input ratio for the same product or service, which may lead them to sever their relationship with the firm or even to retaliate (Grégoire and Fisher, 2008;Martín-Ruiz and Rondán-Cataluña, 2008;Cockrill and Goode, 2010). Xia et al (2004) propose that comparisons with other consumers will have a greater effect on perceived price fairness than comparisons with other sellers or self-references.…”

“…Firms that fail to meet these social expectations are often accused of exploiting the consumer and are treated with suspicion (Maxwell et al, 2009). Current customers may respond more negatively to norm violation due to their higher sense of betrayal (Grégoire and Fisher, 2008). But new customers may also infer that the same could happen to them, as future members of the health club, considering it untrustworthy and as in need of monitoring.…”

Consumer-brand relationships under the effect of consumer dishonest behavior

“…Camerer, 2003;Fehr and Schmidt, 1999) when building relationships with brands. Consumers try to restore fairness when there is a perceived betrayal (Grégoire and Fisher, 2008). Their attempts to restore fairness include retaliation by punishing and causing inconvenience for a brand (Bechwati and Morrin, 2003;Grégoire and Fisher, 2006).…”

The Effect of Inconsistent Product Attribute Reviews on Consumers’ Purchase Intention

“…On the other hand, the relationship between the consumer and the enterprise or the brand is similar to friendship. Consumers have strong emotional connection and high trust (Grégoire & Fisher, 2008), and want to maintain their friendly relationship (Stutman & Newell, 1990). At the same time, in the common relationship norm, consumers will stand in the corporate perspective.…”