The present study investigates four factors (aggressive personality, brand trust, blame attribution, and perceived fairness) leading to Love-becomes-hate effect through the moderating effect of brand love on the relationship between failure severity and consumer’s negative emotions. This paper empirically examines the factors leading to Love-becomes-hate effect based on a questionnaire survey among 532 Chinese respondents. This study found that at high level of Aggressive personality, low level of Brand trust, high level of Blame attribution, and low level of Perceived fairness are considered as factors leading to Love-becomes-hate effect. Consumers with the above traits decide to vent negative emotions and pursue retaliation actions against the focal firms. This study contributes to the theory development of brand failure and consumer retaliation literature. This study also provides suggestions for private and public companies on how to properly deal with consumer’s negative responses to product or service failure. Research findings can be guideline for managers to take the quick decision and prompt action when product or service failure occurs. 

This study will: (1) illustrate how failure severity leads to consumer retaliation via consumer’s negative emotion as a mediator, and (2) examine when love-becomes-hate effect happens (when brand love moderates failure severity and consumer’s negative responses link). We will examine how aggressive personality, brand trust, blame attribution, and perceived fairness impact the moderation role of brand love in the relationship between failure severity and consumer’s negative responses. Therefore, academics and marketing managers can gain important insights from our research findings on how to manage product/service failure and how to deal with customer negative behaviors properly. 

The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. First, we review literature, define research constructs, establish conceptual framework and develop hypotheses regarding mediating role of emotion and moderating role of brand love in the relationship between failure severity and consumer retaliation. This is followed by a description of the methods used to test the framework and hypotheses. Subsequently, the research findings are reported. Finally, the conclusions and implications of the study are discussed, and limitations and future research direction are presented.

This study has developed the survey questionnaire (close-ended-question) to acquire the responses from Chinese respondents. The questionnaire was made in Chinese and English versions for the ease of respondents to answer. It was divided into three parts, including brand failure details (2 items), demographic profile (6 items), and measurement scales (32 items). Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement toward each statement (a five-point Likert scale), from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree.