There is compelling evidence that incidents of customer rage are on the rise, and not just in Western societies. Changing social and economic conditions in Asia (e.g., emerging consumerism and rising wealth in China) have spawned the emergence of customer rage incidents in wide variety of societies.
Drawing from a survey of 982 customers in China, Thailand, Australia and the USA, Paul Patterson and his colleagues show that although customers from western cultures are more likely than their Asian counterparts to exhibit rage emotions, the connection between rage emotions and expressions of those emotions is generally stronger in the Asian cultures they studied. This finding contradicts generally held beliefs of Asian consumers suppressing negative emotion expressions.
Not only did the authors find that consumers from the Asian cultures they studied are more likely than their western counterparts to engage in revenge, they tend to exhibit more extreme forms of anger (retaliatory rage), extreme physical rage expressions, and are more are likely to take revenge. Moreover, retaliatory rage was more strongly associated with physical expression in the Asian contexts the authors studied than in western cultures. A key finding is that Asian consumers though slow to anger, once initiated, their rage expressions toward service workers tend to be physical and vengeful. Important lessons for management need to be learned.
Study authors:
Paul G. Patterson, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Janet R. McColl-Kennedy, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Michael K. Brady, Florida State University, USA
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