Behavioral Norms in Consumers'World of Power: When and Why Shame and Guilt Increase Compliance

摘要

The online world has provided consumers with a unique chance of being heard.Social media and online reviews provide an opportunity for consumers to easily communicate their thoughts and attitudes towards a firm's services,products and behavior.This is only one of the factors contributing to a shift in the power dynamics in the marketplace in favor of consumers.Unfortunately,consumers sometimes capitalize and leverage their online power in unethical ways.The undesirable consumer behavior ranges from something as mundane as excessive merchandise returns(Dennis 2018)to behavior as outrageous as review blackmail(Blumentha 2015;Payne 2014).Regardless of the extremity of such behavior,they pose a threat to businesses.The significance of this issue becomes evident when we live in a world where online reviews and reputation can make or break a business and this reputation is at the mercy of consumers.Small and new businesses are particularly vulnerable to consumer power misuse as they do not possess the resources or established reputation to buffer the costs associated with instances of consumer unethical behavior.In the current study we explore the following question: How can businesses discourage consumers from engaging in unethical behavior without compromising attitudes toward the business?