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Witnessing Incivility among Employees: Effects on Consumer Anger and Negative Inferences about Companies

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  • Christine Porath
  • Debbie Macinnis
  • Valerie Folkes

Abstract

We introduce the incivility construct and demonstrate that witnessing an incident of employee-employee incivility causes consumers to make negative generalizations about (a) others who work for the firm, (b) the firm as a whole, and (c) future encounters with the firm, inferences that go well beyond the incivility incident. We demonstrate the process by which these effects occur, showing that anger at the uncivil employee induces these effects. We find that anger leads to rumination about the uncivil encounter and causes customers to make quicker and more negative generalizations about related entities. We also identify boundary conditions for the relationship between incivility and negative generalizations. These process and boundary condition results add theoretically to the literature on incivility as well as that on anger's effect on information processing. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Suggested Citation

  • Christine Porath & Debbie Macinnis & Valerie Folkes, 2010. "Witnessing Incivility among Employees: Effects on Consumer Anger and Negative Inferences about Companies," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(2), pages 292-303, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:37:y:2010:i:2:p:292-303
    DOI: 10.1086/651565
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Nitzsche, Martina & Ribeiro, Luisa & Laneiro, Tito, 2018. "Workplace incivility among Portuguese hotel employees: Is lack of respect burning them out?," Journal of Tourism, Sustainability and Well-being, Cinturs - Research Centre for Tourism, Sustainability and Well-being, University of Algarve, vol. 6(1), pages 52-71.
    2. Sharma, Isha & Jain, Kokil & Behl, Abhishek, 2020. "Effect of service transgressions on distant third-party customers: The role of moral identity and moral judgment," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 696-712.
    3. Lin, Chieh-Peng & Tsai, Yuan-Hui & Chiu, Chou-Kang & Liu, Chia-Ping, 2015. "Forecasting the purchase intention of IT product: Key roles of trust and environmental consciousness for IT firms," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 148-155.
    4. Arne K. Albrecht & Gianfranco Walsh & Simon Brach & Dwayne D. Gremler & Erica Herpen, 2017. "The influence of service employees and other customers on customer unfriendliness: a social norms perspective," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 45(6), pages 827-847, November.
    5. Mansur Khamitov & Yany Grégoire & Anshu Suri, 2020. "A systematic review of brand transgression, service failure recovery and product-harm crisis: integration and guiding insights," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 519-542, May.
    6. Morrow, Paula C. & McElroy, James C. & Scheibe, Kevin P., 2011. "Work unit incivility, job satisfaction, and total quality management among transportation employees," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1210-1220.
    7. Nguyen, Bang & Klaus, Philipp “Philâ€, 2013. "Retail fairness: Exploring consumer perceptions of fairness towards retailers’ marketing tactics," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 311-324.
    8. Her-Ting Huang & Chieh-Peng Lin, 2019. "Assessing ethical efficacy, workplace incivility, and turnover intention: a moderated-mediation model," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 33-56, February.
    9. Surachartkumtonkun, Jiraporn (Nui) & Grace, Debra & Ross, Mitchell, 2021. "Unfair customer reviews: Third-party perceptions and managerial responses," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 631-640.
    10. Dong-Jin Lee & Grace B. Yu & M. Joseph Sirgy & Anusorn Singhapakdi & Lorenzo Lucianetti, 2018. "The Effects of Explicit and Implicit Ethics Institutionalization on Employee Life Satisfaction and Happiness: The Mediating Effects of Employee Experiences in Work Life and Moderating Effects of Work–," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(4), pages 855-874, February.
    11. Bacile, Todd J. & Wolter, Jeremy S. & Allen, Alexis M. & Xu, Pei, 2018. "The Effects of Online Incivility and Consumer-to-Consumer Interactional Justice on Complainants, Observers, and Service Providers During Social Media Service Recovery," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 60-81.
    12. Parker, Janna M. & Marasi, Shelly & James, Kevin W. & Wall, Alison, 2019. "Should employees be “dooced” for a social media post? The role of social media marketing governance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-9.
    13. Manthiou, Aikaterini & Hickman, Ellie & Klaus, Phil, 2020. "Beyond good and bad: Challenging the suggested role of emotions in customer experience (CX) research," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    14. Ni, Dan & Yang, Mengxi & Luo, Senhan & Chen, Wansi, 2024. "A third-party perspective for examining employee reactions to witnessing coworker incivility towards customers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    15. Locander, Jennifer A. & White, Allyn & Newman, Christopher L., 2020. "Customer responses to frontline employee complaining in retail service environments: The role of perceived impropriety," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 315-323.
    16. Yu-Shan Huang & Shuqin Wei & Tyson Ang, 2022. "The Role of Customer Perceived Ethicality in Explaining the Impact of Incivility Among Employees on Customer Unethical Behavior and Customer Citizenship Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(2), pages 519-535, June.
    17. Allison R. Johnson & Valerie S. Folkes & Juan Wang, 2018. "When one bad apple spoils consumers’ judgment of the brand: exposure to an employee’s non-workplace transgression and potential remedies," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 725-743, July.
    18. William Fritz & Rhonda Hadi & Andrew Stephen, 2023. "From tablet to table: How augmented reality influences food desirability," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 503-529, May.

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