Perceived injustice and brand love: the effectiveness of sympathetic vs empathetic responses to address consumer complaints of unjust specific service encounters

Abstract

Purpose Negative online consumer reviews represent different forms of injustice. The effect of different types of injustice experienced in a service encounter on a brand is unknown. This study aims to investigate the effect and cause of different forms of injustice on brand love. It also explores which type of responses are more effective to mitigate their damaging effect. Design/methodology/approach One text mining, using SAS enterprise miner, and three experimental studies were conducted. ANOVA and mediation and moderation analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings Negative reviews specific to procedural injustice are more damaging than reviews specific to distributive or interactional injustice experienced in a service encounter. The underlying reason behind this differential effect is that perceived procedural injustice influences consumers more to punish the brand, resulting in a greater negative effect on brand love. To counter the damage, a sympathetic, rather than empathetic, brand response is more effective. Originality/value This study contributes to justice theory and brand love literature by providing evidence that procedural injustice triggers the highest level of willingness to punish and thus the lowest level of brand love. Consequently, willingness to punish, rather than emotion, is found to be the underlying reason behind procedural injustice having the strongest negative effect on brand love.