Bribing Angry Consumers to Forgive and Repatronage with the Brand: Moderating Role of Personality and Recovery Strategies

Abstract

Brand hate is felt when the consumer experiences extreme negative emotions towards the brand thus detaches oneself from that brand. This study probed the conditions where a consumer forgave the brand that they hated and made a repurchase of that brand. The study also investigated two types of recovery strategies i) apology and ii) compensation. These recovery strategies were tested to moderate the relationship between brand hate and forgiveness such that the use of recovery strategies encouraged the consumer to forgive the brand and make a repurchase. Additionally, the role of two consumer’s personality traits; agreeableness and conscientiousness (using Big-Five personality model) were examined to explore the type of recovery strategy best suited for a consumer to forgive the brand. These results may be used by practitioners to transform hateful feelings of their consumers towards the brands. Working women were employed as sample to this research because previous research supports that women are more prone to voice out negative feelings and thus express more retaliation. The model was empirically tested using a sample of 237 working women in Pakistan. The findings shine a light on managing brand hate by offering apology to consumers with high levels of agreeableness and on the contrary offering compensation to highly conscience consumers was significant in minimizing brand hate and levering forgiveness.