Framing Effects Among Complaint Bystanders: Small Changes of Words Big Changes of Attitude

This research sheds light on how companies should apply attribute and goal framing in their public responses to online complaints for eliciting favorable reactions by social media bystanders. In contrast to earlier findings, we show that responses in which companies apply positive or negative attribute framing can have similar effects. Furthermore, we demonstrate that for goal framing, a positively framed recovery message is more effective than a negative one. Here, these messages benefit from being perceived as a sincere apology, which triggers bystanders’ benevolence. These insights suggest that marketers should re-consider the usage of differently framed messages in the online complaining context.