Does involvement shapes consumers’ response to product failure?

Purpose Customer reaction to failure is of essential importance and varies by level of involvement with products and services. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to use the FCB grid to examine effects of involvement and emotion on failure of products and services. It also explores effects of negative word-of-mouth, consumer advocacy, customer voicing and gender on the so-called silent killers. Design/methodology/approach A 2 (male or female)×4 (high and low involvement, feelings, thinking in FCB grid) between-subjects experiment on 311 college students, who have recently experienced product failure, is performed. Findings Results reveal that customers with different levels of involvement react differently to product failure. Furthermore, low-involvement products are more likely to develop silent killers. The results also show that silent killer is more common among men. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no similar study is performed on the relationship between involvement and failure of products or services. In addition, this attempt is the first quantitative study to examine the phenomenon of silent killers in this field.