Understanding customer grief in brand relationships

Abstract

Brands are key in building customer-brand relationships, yet organisations change their product lines by reformulating or discontinuing brands. This results in negative customer emotions, including pain and grief. While identified in marketing, grief has received little academic attention. Thus, this research seeks to explore and develop an understanding of customer grief as pain. The empirical context is the change of a breakfast cereal. By applying netnographic research to eight customer-brand fora, this qualitative study analysed 4,080 online customer posts to understand customer grief. Applying the stages of the Kübler-Ross grief model, this study shows that grief is associated with a misalignment of customers’ expectations, practices, and emotions in response to an unexpected brand change. This generates a more fine-grained understanding of customer grief, providing theoretical and practical implications for organisations in managing their brand relationships.

HIGHLIGHTS • The brand is key in building customer-brand relationships, yet organisations change their product lines. • Organisational actions can result in negative customer emotions such as grief. • The empirical context of the study is that of the withdrawal of a breakfast cereal. • This qualitative netnographic study analyses 4,080 online customer posts to understand customer grief. • The study applies the stages of the Kübler-Ross grief model in the context of marketing.