Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres The determinants of approval of online consumer revenge Gisèle de Campos Ribeiro, Raphaëlle Butori, Emmanuelle Le Nagard ⁎ ESSEC Business School, France ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Consumer revenge Dissatisfaction Online word of mouth Situational empathy Vindictive message Attribution of blame ABSTRACT Because of its audience and ease of use, the Internet is a particularly powerful tool for spreading the vindictive messages of highly unsatisfied customers who wish to harm companies' reputations. This article aims to identify the determinants of bystanders' approval of an online vindictive message and to assess the impact of this approval on their intention to forward the message to other Internet users. We conduct three studies to show that 1) bystanders' approval of the vindictive message explains their intention to forward it, 2) the approval of the message is related neither to the balance between the initial harm suffered by the avenging consumer and the consequences of his/her revenge on the company, nor to the presence of apologies from the company; rather it is related to bystander consumers' empathy with the avenger and their attribution of blame to the company as well as their previous purchasing experience. 1. Introduction and context In September 2013, a passenger, Hasan Syed, lost his luggage when flying with British Airways; the airline was unable to give any in- formation as to the whereabouts of the lost bags. Syed then spent almost 1000 dollars sponsoring a tweet to 77,000 of the brand's followers denouncing the company's inefficiency in the following terms: @ BritishAirways is the worst airline ever. Lost my luggage and even can't track it down Absolutely pathetic #British Airways. Six hours after the tweet went live and was picked up by news website Mashable, it had been read by thousands of Twitter users, retweeted and commented on. 1 In July 2014, Ryan Block, an American Internet entrepreneur and his wife Veronica Belmont attempted to disconnect their Comcast ser- vice over the telephone and were repeatedly blocked by the Comcast representative in a call which lasted 18 min. The last 8 min of this phone call were recorded by Mr. Block and posted to Reddit; it im- mediately went viral across the Internet. The story was mentioned by several media, including Time. 2 It is also on Ryan Block's Wikipedia page. These examples show how two highly dissatisfied customers used the media to denounce companies' failure to deal with their dis- satisfaction, stating the facts and pointing out the company's responsi- bility for the loss incurred. Consumers like Hasan Syed or Ryan Block, whose outpourings express the wish to harm the brand's reputation after being dissatisfied, are far from isolated examples. The risk of having unsatisfied customers express their displeasure is a big one according to Arizona State University's 2015 Customer Rage Survey: two-thirds of all complaint respondents said they were very or extremely upset, 86% shared their story with friends or other people, and 10% threatened to contact the media. Moreover, between 2011 and 2015, online posting of customer problems increased significantly from 19% to 30% on social networking sites, and from 1% to 3% on social media sites (where pictures or videos can be posted). 3 By going public with the reason for their dissatisfaction, whether on Facebook, other social media, a specific website or a video, and by clearly pointing to the company's responsibility for their dissatisfaction, discontented consumers display their desire to harm the company concerned. This wish to harm in response to a loss incurred is typical of the phenom- enon of revenge and finds fertile ground on Internet, where messages can be not only seen by other Internet users, but also spread very easily. Such vengeful messages can therefore be considered particularly dan- gerous weapons against companies' reputation and brand image. There are two reasons for this. First, consumers exposed to online revenge may be directly influenced by this and may alter their attitude towards the company concerned. For example, Kucuk (2008) and Krishnamurthy and Kucuk (2009) showed that anti-brand sites nega- tively influenced brand value. Second, these same consumers may in turn become actors of revenge by spreading the message on Internet, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.03.024 Received 16 January 2017; Received in revised form 10 March 2018; Accepted 20 March 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: decamposribeiro@essec.edu (G. de Campos Ribeiro), butori@essec.edu (R. Butori), lenagard@essec.edu (E. Le Nagard). 1 Wakefield, Jane “Promoted tweet used to complain about British Airways”, Technology reporter, 3 September 2013. 2 Stampler, Laura (15 July 2014). “Recording of Man's Attempt to Cancel Comcast Will Drive You Insane”. Time. Retrieved 16 July 2014. 3 The Customer Rage Survey (2015) used a representative sample of 1000 American households to study the most serious problems that they experienced with products or services within the last 12 months. https://epicconnections.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/04/DialogDirect_CustRage_Guide_v5_0.pdf Journal of Business Research 88 (2018) 212–221 0148-2963/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T