You fooled me, so I’ll tell you about myself! personnel-related brand betrayal experiences and disclosure of personal information

Abstract

Newswise — Past research has extensively studied the negative effects of brand betrayals on consumer attitudes, but largely ignored their potential positive consequences. Also, while previous research has focused on betrayals made by the brand itself, it has paid less attention to betrayals by the brand’s personnel. This paper focuses on one potentially important positive consequence of brand personnel betrayal experiences (a consumer’s feeling of being betrayed by the brand staff members): the increased willingness of consumers to share personal insights and information with the brand after experiencing a brand personnel betrayal. A field data set and two online experiments show that consumers are more prepared to share personal information with the brand when experiencing brand personnel betrayals than when experiencing other types of service or brand failures. The effect is mediated by consumers’ social affirmation mindset and moderated by privacy concerns.