Public complaining: A blessing in disguise? Educational calling as a benevolent process that gives consumers voice on brands’ social media

• Published in: Journal of business research 2022-11, Vol.150, p.476-490
• Main Authors: Siret, Iris, Sabadie, William
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Complaints management; Desire for reconciliation; Desire for vengeance; Educational calling; Humanities and Social Sciences; Public complaining; Social media
• ISSN: 0148-2963; 1873-7978
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.05.084

•Both desire for revenge and desire for reconciliation lead to public complaining.•Public complaints can result from a desire to help the brand move forward.•The desire for reconciliation affects public complaining via educational calling.•Strong ties and single deviation contexts favor the emergence of educational calling. When consumers use social media to complain, they threaten to undermine brands’ images and online reputations. Academics and managers usually regard such public complaining as harmful or as expressions of a desire to hurt brands. Instead, an alternative, benevolent, and educational consumer motivation for complaining on brands’ social media might exist. By specifying the nature of this educational calling to complain and the contextual variables that favor its emergence, the current research outlines the process by which well-intentioned consumers seek to help brands improve, even if it means publicly pointing fingers. Four experiments show that both desire for revenge and desire for reconciliation affect public complaining; strong ties and single deviation contexts favor the benevolent process of online complaining; and benevolent complainants are more amenable to process recovery communication that does not necessarily include compensation.