Mind your tone: how swear words in online complaints influence bystander perceptions of airlines and hotels
Maqsood Hussain Bhutto, Joel Mero, Heikki KarjaluotoPurpose
The prevalence of uncivil consumer behavior on social media presents challenges for brands managing publicly visible complaint interactions, where bystanders observe and evaluate responses. While prior research has examined accommodative brand responses and online incivility, few studies have examined how complaint tone shapes bystanders’ perceptions of accommodative responses in publicly visible interactions.
Design/methodology/approach
Two online scenario experiments were conducted with US consumers, using the airline (N = 679) and hotel (N = 553) industries as contexts. Both studies utilized a 2 × 2 design to test the proposed model.
Findings
Accommodative responses significantly increased bystanders’ purchase intentions, and this effect was fully mediated by brand attitude. Complaint tone moderated this indirect effect such that the positive impact of accommodative responses was stronger for civil complaints and weaker for uncivil complaints.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that brand managers should adopt tone-sensitive response strategies when managing public complaints, while platforms and policymakers should support tools and guidelines that reduce online incivility and promote constructive communication environments.
Originality/value
This study examined accommodative responses, complaint tone, and observing bystanders together in public social media complaint interactions and found that bystanders interpret brand responses in relation to the complaint tone that precedes them. The findings demonstrate that accommodative responses improve brand attitude and purchase intention more strongly for civil complaints than for uncivil complaints. The study also extends social learning theory by showing that bystanders learn from both brand behavior and consumer tone.