Sense of online betrayal, brand hate, and outrage customers’ anti-brand activism

  • Received September 25, 2021;
    Accepted November 5, 2021;
    Published November 11, 2021
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/im.17(4).2021.07
  • Article Info
    Volume 17 2021, Issue #4, pp. 75-87
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The current study develops a research model and explores the correlation between customer sense of online betrayal, brand hate, and anti-brand activism. The outrage customers’ anti-brand behaviors consist of negative online word of mouth, online public complaining, and online boycott. Data from an online survey of 383 online shoppers were used to test seven proposed hypotheses. The partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was adopted to assess the measurement and structural model. The findings showed that the sense of online betrayal positively and significantly affects brand hate and anti-brand behaviors. In addition, brand hate is also the leading cause of customers’ anti-brand actions. The present study highlights the mediation role of brand hate in eliciting revenge from consumers subjected to online betrayal. This study also gives some recommendations to customers to stop the misconduct behaviors of online betrayals, such as spreading their betrayal cases to friends and relatives via social media, then asking for supports and help from governmental and legal agencies and participating in boycotts; raising boycott movements against the betraying brand should be considered as the most extreme punishment.

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    • Figure 1. Modeling results
    • Table 1. Internal consistency reliability and convergent validity
    • Table 2. Discriminant validity
    • Table 3. R2, Q2, and SMRM
    • Table 4. Hypotheses testing
    • Table A1. Sense of online betrayal (SOB)
    • Table A2. Brand hate (BH)
    • Table A3. Negative online word of mouth (NOW)
    • Table A4. Online public complaining (OPC)
    • Table A5. Online boycott (OB)
    • Conceptualization
      Hai Ninh Nguyen
    • Data curation
      Hai Ninh Nguyen
    • Investigation
      Hai Ninh Nguyen
    • Methodology
      Hai Ninh Nguyen, Thanh Binh Nguyen
    • Resources
      Hai Ninh Nguyen
    • Software
      Hai Ninh Nguyen
    • Supervision
      Hai Ninh Nguyen
    • Writing – original draft
      Hai Ninh Nguyen, Thanh Binh Nguyen
    • Writing – review & editing
      Hai Ninh Nguyen, Thanh Binh Nguyen
    • Formal Analysis
      Thanh Binh Nguyen
    • Project administration
      Thanh Binh Nguyen