| With the rapid development of the e-commerce livestreaming,product failures occur frequently.The speedy growth of social media gives ordinary customers more freedom and rights,increasing the possibility of customers’ retaliation against enterprises.Retaliation against product failure in live-streaming is very likely to bring a public opinion crisis,which becomes an important management problem for live streamers and enterprises to effectively weaken customers’ desire for revenge and offset the negative impact of the incident.To solve the above problems,the para-social romantic relationship(PSRR,imaginary romantic relationship)between customers and live streamers in e-commerce livestreaming becomes the breakthrough of the research.There are two main conjectures regarding the effect of para-social romantic relationship on desire for revenge: one is “love is blind”,which weakens desire for revenge;the other is “love becomes hate”,which enhances desire for revenge.However,few studies have examined which of the two directions is more realistic.To this end,this research explores the occurrence mechanism of customers’ desire for revenge,reveals the moderating role of para-social romantic relationship,and investigates the effect of product type on the moderation effect of parasocial romantic relationship in the context of e-commerce livestreaming product failure.By combing the literature related to product failure in e-commerce livestreaming,perceived controllability,anger,desire for revenge,para-social romantic relationship and product type,this research constructs a research model based on justice theory,attribution theory,cognitive appraisal theory and social exchange theory to examine the occurrence mechanism of customers’ desire for revenge,the moderating role of para-social romantic relationship and the difference of the moderation effect of para-social romantic relationship under product type in the context of e-commerce livestreaming product failure.In study1(N=1006),a questionnaire survey with a real live streamer reveals that the higher the customers’ perceived controllability(i.e.,the live streamer is believed to be primarily responsible for the product failure),the stronger the anger,which in turn enhances their desire for revenge against live streamers.The para-social romantic relationship has a “lovebecome-hate” moderating effect on the relation between perceived controllability and anger,and moderates the indirect relationship of perceived controllability on desire for revenge through anger.Study 2(N=321)is based on an experiment that again verified the reliability of the results of study 1.Study 3(N=403)introduces a product-type variable to provide supporting evidence for the moderating effect of product type moderating parasocial romantic relationship on perceived controllability positively affecting anger.The main findings of this research are as follows:(1)Perceived controllability positively affects desire for revenge.(2)Anger mediates the effect of perceived controllability on desire for revenge.(3)The para-social romantic relationship exerts a“love-become-hate” moderating effect on the relationship between perceived controllability and anger,which reinforces the positive effect of perceived controllability on anger.(4)In indirect relationship where perceived controllability affects desire for revenge through anger,the para-social romantic relationship has a moderating effect of“love-become-hate”.(5)The moderating effect of para-social romantic relationship on the relationship between perceived controllability and anger is moderated by product type,with the moderating effect of para-social romantic relationship being strongest among credence goods,followed by experience goods and weakest among search goods.The main contributions of this research are:(1)New evidence of the “love-become-hate” moderating effect of strong consumer-firm relationships(para-social romantic relationship)is provided based on the context of e-commerce livestreaming product failure.(2)The research extends customer revenge to the context of e-commerce livestreaming product failure to reveal the mechanisms influencing customers’ retaliatory responses to e-commerce livestreaming product failure.(3)The research content on product type in the area of customer retaliation and e-commerce livestreaming is complemented.The following are managerial implications of this research.First of all,to do a better job of crisis management regarding product failure in e-commerce livestreaming,live streamers need to control product quality at the source,which is the best strategy to circumvent product failure events and customers’ desire for revenge.Secondly,reliable and professional live streamers are chosen to carry out the products to avoid product failure events caused by live streamers’ incompetence or greed for the sake of reducing customers’ retaliation.Thirdly,since the strong relationship(para-social romantic relationship)between customers and live streamers does not always lead to positive results in the e-commerce livestreaming,so as to avoid negative effects caused by “love-become-hate” of customers,special attention and effective appeasement should be paid to customers who have strong para-social romantic relationships with opposite-sex live streamers.Finally,compared with search goods,the selection supervision and crisis management of credence goods and experience goods should be strengthened.Once the product failure event occurs,guide and soothe the customers with strong para-social romantic relationship to avoid the escalation of anger and desire for revenge. |
