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

Recent marketing and service research highlights the detrimental impact of negative customer engagement behaviour (CEB) in online social networks. Nevertheless, the extant literature captures the 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 negative CEB by investigating the impact of six forms of negatively valenced influencing behaviour (NVIB) using two online experiments. Our results provide new insights into intensity levels of NVIB and how they are moderated by positive reviews. Practically, this paper addresses one of the challenges for service providers in managing NVIBs, centred on understanding the heterogeneity of its forms. The results suggest that managers use semantic tools to detect the intensity levels of NVIB and to prioritise handling and/or mitigating the more intense NVIBs when they occur.