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1. Introduction
Although consumers elect to maintain relationships with their loving brands, the notion that, in the event of a brand transgression (BT), consumer–brand relationship can be negatively affected is obvious and the severity of this transgression will determine the effect on the outcome (Tsarenko and Tojib, 2012). BT is an “act of violation of the implicit or explicit rules guiding consumer-brand relationship performance and evaluation” (Aaker et al., 2004). When there is a transgression, consumers decide whether to continue their relationship with the brand or abandon the brand (Sayin and Gürhan-Canlı, 2015). The focus of this study is to understand the mechanism that explains the relationship between firms’ transgression and the relationship quality.
Recent news in the media suggests that younger people are using popular social media such as Facebook more often. According to The Nielsen Company (2012), Facebook has about 1.2 billion users. Given the large consumer segment of Facebook, understanding consumers’ response to social media transgression will be germane to the literature. Social media platform such as Facebook fosters interaction between brands and consumers, which helps create brand relationships (Muniz and O'guinn, 2001). When such a brand transgresses, how will consumers’ relationship with the brand change? Will consumers continue to use the brand? If so, why? This study proposes that when a brand like Facebook transgresses, consumers will be eager to maintain their relationship with the brand because such a relationship is regarded in the eyes of consumers as an investment (Ysseldyk and Wohl, 2012). Consumers dread to lose their investment and therefore will resort to coping strategies amidst service failures.
A recent study identifies three emotion-focused coping strategies – brand forgiveness (BF), brand evangelism (BE) and word of mouth (Schnebelen and Bruhn, 2018). These are strategies individuals engage in to regulate their emotional experience (Schnebelen and Bruhn, 2018). In the psychology literature forgiveness is defined as “the willful giving up of resentment in the face of another’s (or others’) considerable injustice and responding with beneficence to the offender even though that offender has no right to the forgiver’s moral goodness” (Baskin and Robert, 2004). In the marketing domain, Xie and Peng (2009), define forgiveness as “consumers” willingness to give up retaliation, alienation and other destructive behaviors and to respond in...