Opportunism in Interpersonal Exchange

Abstract

Traditionally, it is assumed that high (low) customer satisfaction leads to positive (negative) word of mouth. However, previous research has ignored that in some situations, consumers will tend to give positive WOM about a recent negative experience, because they feel ashamed or embarrassed about admitting a negative experience or a bad choice. In this paper, we discuss the theoretical background of such opportunistic behavior in consumer-to-consumer exchanges and present the results of an exploratory pilot and a subsequent experi-mental study which show that such behavior mainly takes place when consumers are commu-nicating to weak ties about high-involvement products.

Keywords: Consumer-to-Consumer, Interpersonal Communications, Word of Mouth, Decep-tion, Opportunism