The Effect of Regret on negative word-of-mouth: The Mediating Effect of impression management.

• Main Authors: Mei-ying Kuo, 郭美瑛
• Other Authors: Chi-cheng Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/yakcb8

碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 企業管理學系研究所 === 97 === When an individual experienced that the assumptions are different with the ones when he/she made decisions, and if the actual or imaginational current situations might be better given the information then, a kind of negative emotion named “regret” emerges. Previous studies found that regret played similar roles in terms of satisfaction, repurchase behavior and intention of complain: regret lowers the satisfaction and repurchase behavior, and indirectly affects the intention of complain through low satisfaction. However, different results are found in the realm of willingness of word-of-mouth communications. Thus, this research combines the work of Zeelenberg & Pieters (2004a) and daily observations for the sake of discussing whether impression management factors causes consumers not to conduct negative word-of-mouth communications albeit regretting their previous decisions – or even carry out positive word-of-mouth communications in extreme cases. The study served scenario design as the main method. Experiment 1 was used in determining the relation between subjects’ word-of-mouth communication behaviorsand their level of regret. The decision category “switch and maintain” is an indicatorof the subjects’ level of regret. The results indicate that when subjects perceive“higher level of regret if experienced” (i.e. the decision category of switch), theywould possess significantly higher level of effect in word-of-mouth communications then subjects in the other category. The thesis added impression management in experiment 2, they are 「dependence」and「self-monitoring」, in order to test whether would subjects be affected due to impression management behaviors in terms of the willingness to conduct negative word-of-mouth communications. The results indicate that whether the decision categories or level of experienced regret are served as the measurement of emotions, “level of dependent” and “level of self-monitoring” play significant harmonizing roles in communicating negative word-of-mouth information. Significant decrease of such willingness is found in the category of high level of dependent.