Firms' Induced Consumer Embarrassment: A Systematic Literature Review.
| Author | Sangwan, Vaishali |
Introduction
During a product purchase situation in retail space or during consumption of a service, such as fine-dining in restaurants, consumers come in contact with various firms related variables and activities, such as the physical environment of retail stores, the in-store promotions, and advertisements, among others. Several studies demonstrate the effect of firms related factors on consumer encounter experience and future intentions to indulge with the organizations (e.g., Chakraborty, 2017). Many authors argue that the social context during a customer transaction is more important than the financial benefits in determining customer satisfaction and future behaviors (e.g., Matilla & Patterson, 2004). The customer and firms' encounters have the capacity to evoke several affective states in customers (Sharma et al., 2015), including emotions, such as embarrassment (Grace, 2007). The emotion of consumer embarrassment is the phenomenon of interest for this article.
Consumer embarrassment is a common yet unpleasant state experienced by individuals in a wide array of situations. Consumers may feel embarrassed and awkward while buying products, such as pornographic magazines, weight-loss products, bladder control medicines, and more. Consumers may also experience this aversive emotion when a salesperson accidentally violates privacy, falsely accuses the customer of taking products out of the store without billing, or a promotion activity by a firm that suddenly puts the customers in the public limelight.
Consumer embarrassment has many negative implications for firms, including a reduction in customer pleasure, satisfaction, and purchase intentions (Otterbring & Lu, 2018). Ironically, however, in various instances, firms become the drivers of consumer embarrassment through multiple means. Moreover, when firms' activities trigger consumer embarrassment, consequences are extreme, including the future boycott of firms, heightened negative word of mouth, and complaining intentions (e.g., Grace, 2009; Wan, 2013). Despite the adverse implications, evidence shows that organizations can also help customers effectively deal with embarrassment in various ways. For instance, the availability of shopping baskets in a retail store promotes the purchase of condoms (Esmark et al., 2017).
Owing to the importance and wide occurrence of the phenomenon of embarrassment, there is a need to systematically review the extant work on firmrelated drivers of consumer embarrass ment and the firm-related factors that aid in consumers dealing with embarrassment. Although, Krishna et al. (2019) present a review on consumer embarrassment focusing on public and private nature of embarrassment, no review currently focuses on consumer embarrassment in association with firm-related factors. The study has the following objectives:
* To provide an analysis of the firm caused drivers of consumer embarrassment within various purchase and consumption contexts.
* To discuss firm-related strategies that facilitate customers' coping with embarrassment.
* To review the current state of research with a discussion on the research methodology used, publication trend, and details about individual studies.
Theoretical Background
Embarrassment: Embarrassment is an unpleasant state of chagrin and mortification involving a sense of exposure and awkward self-consciousness (Edelmann, 1987; Modigliani, 1971). Embarrassment is a social emotion that is experienced in situations where people fail to display a desirable public image due to unwanted social or moral predicaments, such as stealing (Goffman, 1963; Miller, 1996). The physical display of embarrassment is easily observable (Miller, 2007) and comprises various physiological responses such as gaze aversion, smiling, face-touching, blushing, and shaking, among others (Grace, 2007). Embarrassment largely happens in public when others are present and rarely in private contexts (Krishna et al., 2019).
Article Selection Methodology
In this systematic literature review (SLR), we followed a methodical approach to select studies for analysis. SLR undertakes study selection through a robust and multi-stage approach (Gupta & Bhatnagar, 2018). Below is a discussion on the steps undertaken for the selection of studies:
Step 1: In the first step, the author collected all relevant articles from three major online databases that matched the searched string. The searched keywords comprise consumption embarrassment, purchase embarrassment, buyer embarrassment, customer embarrassment, and consumer embarrassment. The considered online databases are EBSCOhost, Proquest, and Web of Science. The author limits the search to three sections of published peer-reviewed articles: title, abstract, and keywords. In the first step, the search yielded 407 articles after removing the duplicates.
Step 2: As a next step, the articles are matched to the inclusion criteria, removing the papers irrelevant to the study objective. The inclusion criteria consist of:
-
The article should be rooted in the purchase or consumption context,
-
The full text of the article should be available in English.
-
The author considered research papers only comprising primary studies, extended abstracts, and reviews.
-
The focus should be based on the interaction of firms (firm-related variables) and customers/consumers.
To meet the above-stated criteria, the author did an abstract-based search of the articles and retained the relevant studies.
Step 3: Certain articles were excluded from the final list of selected studies due to their unfitness in the consumption or purchase situations. Many studies are from the medical/medicine domain, evoking embarrassment from medical tests and examinations. The articles were excluded from the final analysis. A total of 41 articles are selected for the analysis after a full-text search. The next section presents a discussion of various characteristics of the selected studies.
Characteristics of the Selected Studies
Publication Trend: The selected articles reflect research for a span of 20 years, from 2001 to 2021. The increasing interest in marketing discipline toward the adverse emotion is reflected in the growing number of publications year-onyear. The publishing trend is illustrated in fig. 1. The scholarly interest in the phenomenon of consumer embarrassment has seen a steady rise since the 2000s. The number of articles published between 2001 and 2011 is seven; however, in the last decade, the investigations have risen to 34.
Source of Publication: The selected list of studies is published in highly reputable journals. Table 1 presents the journals and the article publication frequency. Considering the role of various firm-based triggers (e.g., salesperson and retail environment) in inducing consumer embarrassment, many studies are pub lished in retailing and service-oriented journals, such as the Journal of Retailing. Further, many articles are published in journals oriented toward understanding consumer behavior and psychology, including the Journal of Consumer Research.
Research Techniques: A vast majority of the studies are quantitative in nature, with a few studies adopting the qualitative and mixed-methods approach. Fig. 2 presents the research orientation of the articles. Among the quantitative studies, most have used experimental techniques to investigate consumer embarrassment. In total, 27 studies use experimental or quasi-experimental methods. The survey technique is utilized by eight studies, whereas one study developed a scale on embarrassment triggered due to the inability to use advanced products in retail stores, such as self-help technology. As illustrated in fig. 2, four studies investigate the phenomenon through qualitative research techniques, using the critical incident technique, content analysis of in-depth interviews, and focus groups.
Study Details: An overview of the selected studies is given in Table 2. The table presents the study objective and major findings.
Findings: The conceptual model below presents the major findings, including firm-based drivers that leads to consumer embarrassment and firm-facilitated strategies which addresses consumers' coping with embarrassment.
Firm-based Drivers of Consumer Embarrassment
The firm-based drivers are classified into three categories. Firm-activities induced, employee-induced, and servicescape-induced triggers.
Firm Activities-induced: Several firm-related activities, including sales and promotion, relationship marketing activities, and product-related features such as packaging, induce consumer embarrassment.
Personalized advertisement is a tool companies use to offer customized offerings to customers; however, they may cause embarrassment if they reveal sensitive information about customers (Wan et al., 2008). For instance, Hess et al...
To continue reading
Request your trialCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
