An investigation of consumer reactions to negative word-of-mouth on the Internet.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Word-of-mouth (WOM) affects both business success and consumer purchase decisions. Many researchers and marketers make the assumption that negative WOM is inherently bad and believe that it leads to more negative brand evaluations and a reduction in purchase behavior. The present study scrutinized this assumption by investigating actual consumer reactions to negative WOM. This was accomplished using newsgroup conversations about products, retailers, and service providers collected on the Internet. A coding frame representing reactions to negative WOM was created and used to undertake a content analysis of the reactions to negative WOM in 201 conversations.
The findings reveal that negative WOM does not always result in negative consequences for the product, retailer, or service provider. Reactions that defused the effect of negative WOM included positive WOM about the company, when a respondent defended the company, and when a respondent made an attribution that a situational variable beyond the control of the company was at fault. Recipients of negative WOM also scrutinized the communicator, including making attributions that the communicator was at fault for the negative WOM event and questioning the communicator's credibility. Reactions that reinforced the negative WOM included an attribution of fault to the company, when respondents shared their own negative experiences about the company, and when respondents recommended that the original communicator try another company or product.
Recipients of negative WOM evaluated whether the negative WOM event was consistent with their prior knowledge about the company and they made attributions about what caused the negative WOM event. The concepts of consumer socialization, perspective taking, and naïve economics, are discussed to explain respondents' reactions to negative WOM. Using their own standards of fairness, respondents evaluated the behavior of each party in the exchange. The respondents' beliefs about which party acted reasonably in the exchange determined where blame was placed for the negative WOM event. Recipients of negative WOM also recommended a range of strategies that communicators could pursue to ameliorate their problems with companies. Marketing implications of the findings are discussed as well as future research directions.