The effect of negative customer experiences on brand avoidance and negative wom in the banking sector

Understanding what a brand means to consumers is important to today's marketing researchers and managers. For this reason, both marketing managers and marketing academics have focused on the reasons why consumers prefer certain brands, why they love certain brands, they feel loyalty and they keep purchasing. However, there is another side of the coin, which is also a negative side about the brand. It is a well-known fact that some consumers actively avoid certain brands or even convey their negative thoughts about these brands to their immediate surroundings. However, contrary to the interest in the positive side of the brand in the interactions between the brand and the consumer, it is observed that there are limited studies dealing with the negative side. In this research, this issue is approached from the banking sector perspective and a model has been proposed to identify the brand avoidance problems of bank brands and their underlying causes. Along with the assumption that some negative experiences of consumers with the bank brand will lead to negative attitudes and behaviors, in the research model, negative customer experiences were considered as independent variables, brand avoidance behavior and negative word of mouth marketing dependent variables. In order to test the model within the scope of a quantitative research, it is aimed to reach consumers who have had negative experiences with a bank before and therefore terminated their relationship with that bank through an online survey. While determining the sample, a relationship with the bank was established and negative experiences were presented as a condition in order not to cause hypothetical responses that can only be given as a result of an impression or a perceptual situation. In this direction, data was obtained from 411 consumers. The findings obtained as a result of the analysis made showed that negative experiences have an effect on brand avoidance and negative word-of-mouth communication. It has been determined that there are statistically significant differences in many of the demographic factors.