Expressing Consumer Dissatisfaction Online: Antecedents and Effects of Negative Wom in Social Media
Based on the models of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction (CS/D) studied in past research (Churchill and Surprenant 1982; Oliver 1980), complaint behavior occurs when consumer become dissatisfied with a purchase that did not meet their expectations abo
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r attitude toward complaining will increase the (a) negative WOM and (b) negative eWOM.
Involvement can be thought of as the consumer's enduring perceptions of the importance of the product category based on the consumer's inherent needs, values, and interests (De Wulf et al. 2001), and has been described as a motive for engaging in WOM (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004). H2:
A greater level of involvement will increase the (a) negative WOM and (b) negative eWOM.
In addition, according to Rahtz and Moore (1989), higher levels of involvement with products are predictive of purchase intent. As noted by Hume and Mort (2008) involvement has an important impact “at all stages of consumption and repurchase intent” (p. 299). H3:
A greater level of involvement will increase the repurchase intent.
Based on Sundaram et al. (1998), WOM is a form of interpersonal communication between consumers concerning their past experiences with products or services, and represents also a powerful marketing tool for businesses. From the consumer perspective, negative WOM is likely to “dissuade potential buyers from considering a particular product or brand” (Sundaram et al. 1998, p. 527), and has been found to be inversely related to repurchase intention (Blodgett et al. 1993). H4:
The greater the (a) negative WOM and (b) negative eWOM, the lower the repurchase intent.
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According to Shih (2004), the ease of use of the web refers to the perceived ease of browsing and inquiring online. Perceived ease of use has been found to be related to usage intentions for a wide variety of technology (Venkatesh and Davis 2000). This could suggest that ease of use of the web might moderate consumers’ preference for either web-based or conventional communications. However, it is necessary to study and understand the directionality of such interactions. H5
The effects from attitude toward complaining to (a) negative WOM and (b) negative eWOM are moderated by the ease of use of the web.
H6
The effects from involvement to (a) negative WOM and (b) negative eWOM are moderated by the ease of use of the web. METHODOLOGY
In order to investigate the proposed hypotheses, it was necessary to collect data from consumers who had experienced negative experiences with products or services and who complained about it. A condition was that such consumers possess a Facebook account, in order to have the possibility of engaging in negative eWOM through social networks. Thus, an invitation to fill out an online survey was sent to540 Facebook users, asking them to describe a recent experience in which they were dissatisfied with a product or service, and for which they lodged a complaint with the product seller or service provider (Tax et al.1998). 195 subjects completed the questionnaire (36% response rate), and after eliminating surveys with incomplete data, a total of 118 usable cases were included in the quantitative analysis. The operationalization of the constructs to measure attitude toward complaining was based on the scales from Singh (1990); involvement with p
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