When and Why Does Corporate Hypocrisy Trigger Vindictive Customer Behaviors? The Moderating Role of Self-Construal

초록

Although past research has unpacked various detrimental consequences of corporate hypocrisy (i.e., an inconsistency between a firm’s words and behaviors; Wagner et al., 2009), scant research has directly investigated a psychological mechanism underlying the negative impact of corporate hypocrisy on customers’ revengeful behavior. The current research examines how customer cynicism?a situation-driven negative attitude reflecting customer distrust in a firm’s motives and actions (Chylinski & Chu, 2010)?can play a mediating role in explaining the relationship between corporate hypocrisy and two types of vindictive customer behaviors (i.e., desire for revenge and aggressive behavior; H1 and H2). Corporate hypocrisy evokes a host of negative customer responses (Antonetti et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2022). However, customers may differentially perceive the same hypocritical firm behaviors and so they may not show the same degrees of revengeful behaviors to corporate hypocrisy. Corporate hypocrisy requires moral judgment, and it determines how individuals respond to hypocritical firms. It is possible that, depending on one’s self-construal (i.e., independent vs. interdependent self-construal), corporate hypocrisy differently affects customers’ cynical attitudes toward a hypocritical firm. We predict that the negative impact of corporate hypocrisy on customer behaviors would be moderated by how customers view themselves (H3 and H4).