Schadenfreude and sympathy: observer reactions to malicious joy during social media service recovery

Bacile, Todd, Elmadag, Banu, Okan, Mehmet, Dineva, Denitsa ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0451-9021 and Rynarzewska, Ania 2025. Schadenfreude and sympathy: observer reactions to malicious joy during social media service recovery. Journal of Interactive Marketing 60 (1) , pp. 44-64. 10.1177/10949968241246252

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Abstract

Complex social dynamics occur when complaints are voiced on firms’ social media channels. In combination, a complainer criticizes a firm, which may be responded to uncivilly by different online personas, i.e., Internet trolls or loyal customers, with virtually-present observers watching how a firm responds. This research examines customer-to-customer (C2C) uncivil commentary from troll persona and loyal customer persona comments perceived by observers to elicit schadenfreude: malicious joy due to another’s adverse event. Three studies show how C2C schadenfreude targeting a complainer elicits sympathy from observers, which influences observers’ future purchase intent. A preliminary study’s online content analysis using field data shows the frequency of C2C schadenfreude during social media service recovery. Study 2 uncovers moderated mediation of C2C schadenfreude-sympathy-purchase intent, with loyal customer persona comments producing more observer sympathy than troll persona comments. Study 3 finds the harmful effect of observer sympathy on purchase intent varies based on how or if a firm addresses the C2C dialogue. Taken altogether, this research uses a novel cognition (perceived schadenfreude from another’s comment), lesser-studied emotion in marketing (sympathy), and is the first marketing-related work to incorporate backlash theory from organizational management to exemplify how loyal customer comments produce a backlash effect in observers.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	1094-9968
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 June 2024
Date of Acceptance:	28 March 2024
Last Modified:	11 Feb 2025 13:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/167668

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