Quickie: Be Very Afraid! Hell Hath No Fury Like a Customer Scorned
When losing that loving feeling toward products leads to anger and revenge
You were deeply and completely in love. You gave that lover the best years of your life — even when your friends and family said you deserved better. Now it’s over and you’re angry. You want to release a scary torrent of revenge unlike anything that brand has ever seen before.
Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.
According to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, consumers who break up with their favorite products can feel emotions similar to the ones they have when a romantic relationship ends — and they feel as though they’ve lost a piece of themselves when this relationship with products is over.
“As in human relationships, this loss of identity can manifest itself in negative feelings, and subsequent actions may (by design) be unconstructive, malicious, and expressly aimed at hurting the former relationship partner,” Allison R. Johnson, Maggie Matear, and Matthew Thomson wrote in the study.
