Cure Feelings of Retailer Betrayal

A customer’s feelings of betrayal are substantially stronger than a customer’s feelings of disappointment, and the consequences can be substantially more serious. The dominant motives of most dissatisfied customers are to restore a sense of fairness and vent negative emotions. But researchers at University of Bern and University of Texas-Austin found that a customer who feels betrayed by a marketer will frequently devote substantial efforts to harming the marketer’s reputation.
     Based on a subsequent set of studies, another team of researchers—from University of Texas-El Paso, University of Leeds, University of Cyprus, and Dokuz Eylül University—describe the characteristics of the betrayal feelings and, more importantly, ways to cure these destructive emotions.
     Betrayal occurs when the trustworthiness norms of a close relationship are violated. With marketer-customer relationships, the closeness is based on a series of sales transactions. Business relationships aren’t the same as personal relationships, although an advantage available to smaller organizations is the enhanced opportunity to create friendships with customers and clients. Such friendships might ease feelings of betrayal as long as expectations in the relationship are clear to all parties. When expectations are unclear, the hybrid business-personal transactions can instead aggravate a sense of betrayal.
     So clarifying expectations is a potent preventative and cure. The studies find this to be especially important around issues of what information will be disclosed. Customers don’t want to be overwhelmed with details, but they want to be informed. Marketers too often have a different view than do shoppers about what to share. Failure to disclose conflicts of interest were one trigger for feelings of betrayal, according to the studies. Another trigger was a failure to notify the customer that a promise made previously was at risk of not being kept. A retailer may well have thought, “I’ll be able to straighten things out before the promise is due,” while the customer ends up thinking, “If the retailer had told me early on that the promise might not be honored, I would have been disappointed when it wasn’t, but I wouldn’t have felt betrayed.”
     Catalyzing the consumer’s outrage is a sense of powerlessness. Restore the customer’s sense of influence by asking, “What can I do to make things right?” Just being asked and listened to can prevent the active sabotage. If the answer you get involves actions you’re not able or willing to take, you can come back with a reasonable alternative.

For your success: Retailer’s Edge: Boost Profits Using Shopper Psychology

Click below for more: 
Prevent Store Brand Sabotage
Soften Customer Upset Using Friendship
Buttress Trust with Clarity
Acknowledge Customers’ Willful Ignorance