Online Feedback Unveiled: Customer Reactions to Inadequate Service Representation in Digital Reviews
In the digital age, online consumer reviews (OCRs) have become a powerful tool in shaping consumer decision-making. A new study delves into the impact of service failures on consumer arousal and emotions when reading these reviews, using a unique multimodal approach.
The research, presented by its authors in three behavioral experiments, manipulates service failure and linguistic elements of OCRs. It employs innovative methods such as galvanic skin response (GSR), survey measures, and automated facial expression analysis to measure consumer perceptions, arousal, and emotions related to service failures.
Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) measures physiological arousal by detecting changes in skin conductance linked to sweat gland activity. This provides an objective, continuous, and real-time indicator of emotional arousal intensity, typically showing heightened arousal when consumers encounter negative service failure experiences while reading reviews.
Survey measures, on the other hand, capture self-reported emotional states and attitudes such as unhappiness, frustration, or dissatisfaction following service failures described in reviews. These subjective reports reflect consumers' conscious appraisals and specific emotions but can be affected by response biases or affective recall.
Automated facial expression analysis detects micro-expressions and categorical emotions objectively by analysing facial muscle movements. This method can capture immediate emotional reactions that might not be fully reported in surveys and reflect discrete emotions generated by reading about service failures in reviews.
This multimodal approach offers a comprehensive understanding of how service failures influence consumer emotions and buying behavior at multiple psychological levels. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) quantifies arousal level, surveys reveal subjective emotional states, and facial coding identifies specific emotion types elicited by service failures in online reviews.
The study also contributes to the understanding of the negativity bias in a user-generated content context. Negative OCRs lead to the greatest levels of arousal when consumers read them. Moreover, the authors empirically test the effect of emotional contagion in this context, suggesting that consumers can experience emotional responses to service failures even if they did not directly experience the events being described.
The findings contribute significantly to the marketing literature on OCRs in service failures, as well as to the literature on physiological measures of consumers' emotions. However, the authors emphasise that more research is needed, particularly on the influence of review elements such as verbatim text, especially in services contexts.
In conclusion, this study provides valuable insights into the complex emotional dynamics evoked during review reading after service failures. By combining multiple methods, it offers a more holistic view of consumer emotions, helping businesses better understand and respond to customer feedback in the digital age.
- The new study, using a multimodal approach, employs data-and-cloud-computing methods like galvanic skin response (GSR), survey measures, and automated facial expression analysis to delve into the impact of service failures on consumer arousal and emotions when reading online consumer reviews (OCRs), contributing to the science of media analytics.
- This research, in combining objective measures such as GSR and facial coding with subjective self-reported emotional states from surveys, offers a unique perspective on mental-health factors, like stress levels and specific emotions, that could be influenced by reading about service failures in reviews, advancing the health-and-wellness understanding of consumer reactions in the digital age.
- By merging technology, including facial coding and data-and-cloud-computing, the study sheds light on the complex emotional responses consumers experience when reading about service failures in online reviews, marking a significant step forward in technology applications for media analytics and marketing.
