Negative customer engagement behavior : the interplay of intensity and valence in online networks

Recent developments in marketing and service research highlight the potentially detrimental impact of negative customer engagement behavior (CEB) on the attitudes and behaviors of other actors in social networks toward service providers. Specifically, in online contexts, negative CEB is contagious and viral in nature, with ensuing implications that may have short and long-term financial and reputational repercussions for service providers. Nevertheless, the extant literature predominantly captures only the negative impact of what customers say about service providers in their negative reviews and fails to provide any understanding of different intensity levels of negative engagement. This article marks the first attempt to provide a more nuanced view of the impact of negative CEB. This paper empirically investigates the impact of six distinct forms of negatively valenced influencing behavior (NVIB) using two experimental studies in an online review setting. Our results provide new insights into different intensity levels of NVIB and how they are moderated by the number of positive reviews. Practically, this paper addresses one of the challenges for service providers in managing NVIBs, centered on understanding the heterogeneity of its forms and, hence, their different intensity levels. The results suggest that service providers use semantic tools to detect the intensity levels of NVIB and to prioritize handling and/or mitigating the more intense NVIBs when they occur.