It's going to happen. Someone from your company is going to do something dumb and that will result in a negative review on Facebook or Google or something.

When you break down the kinds of people who spread negative word of mouth, you find different groups, not just genders or ages, but also their personal moral stance, how religious they are, and so on.

You might think that religious people would be more forgiving of mistakes made by your brand.

And you would be wrong. In fact, they're much less forgiving, at least according to some new research. Riza Casidy is an associate professor of marketing at Macquarie University. He and his colleagues recently published a paper in the Journal of Marketing Research called Religious Belief, Religious Priming, and Negative Word of Mouth.

Our podcast host Tod Maffin spoke with him recently about his findings.

Table of Contents

• Why Do the Faithful Complain More?
• How Yelp Reviews Helped the Research
• Determining Sentiment at Scale
• Residents vs. Tourists
• Are Things Better on Sundays?
• How Athiests and Different Religions Fare
• What Is “Religious Priming”?
• How to Attract the Faithful Without Alienating The “Heathens”
• Can Ad Platforms Help us Target?
• What About Really Bad Brand Failures?
• Summary
• Why Riza Wanted to Study This

Tod Maffin: Really, religious people are less forgiving of brands' mistakes?

Riza: Apparently so. We found it surprising actually when we first found it. That's why we did more investigations, did several studies to confirm our findings and apparently it's true. We've seen it from different multiple perspectives of the data and we can confirm then that's the case.

Why Do the Faithful Complain More?

Tod Maffin: Why do you think that is?

Riza: Originally, I thought it's maybe because of their expectations, but when we look at the theological basis for that actually, we found that most religious people, their emphasize is not only on forgiveness but also on fairness. Because religious people believe that justice must be done, so when things go wrong in a service situation, when there's a product failure, service failure, that is considered not fair. They would react strongly, compared to those who are nonreligious.

Tod Maffin: I see. They're trying to reach some equilibrium on justice?

Riza: Yes, something like that. Their sense of fairness we found that, for religious people, they have a higher or stronger sense of fairness compared to non or less religious respondents.

How Yelp Reviews Helped the Research

Tod Maffin: How did you come to this conclusion? You did a bunch of studies and one of them involved a whole bunch of Yelp reviews?

Riza: Yes, correct. The Yelp reviews is actually just an indication of whether more religious people– Because we would expect that more religious people they would rate restaurants higher than less religious because they're more kind, they're more forgiving. If there's a mistake, they're more prosocial in nature. When we found that using ZIP Code as an indicator of religiosity based on church membership per capita, we found that in more religious areas, actually, the rating is lower than in less religious areas.

Actually, more religious consumers are more harsh in terms of giving ratings. We believe that it's driven by their again, sense of fairness. We try to replicate it in a lab study, we give them a scenario of service failure in a restaurant. Throughout four studies, we can confirm that indeed, when failure happens, religious people react stronger. They express less satisfaction and more negative word of mouth.

Tod Maffin: You're talking about the review or the experiment that you did where people were told that they had reserved an ocean-view table at a restaurant for their birthday dinner, but when they arrived, they didn't get it because the restaurant had a first come first serve policy that wasn't disclosed to them at the time of the table reservation. They had to wait half an hour to get a table with no view.

You also asked, essentially, “How religious are you?” Did the results from that experiment line up with your Yelp findings?

Riza: Yes. The results line up with our Yelp findings. Basically, we ask the question at the end of the survey, so there's no way they're exposed to the religious questions in the beginning because it will affect their responses. At the end of the questions, the survey, we ask different items for religiosity. We don't really ask “How religious are you?” We ask, “Do you believe in God? Do you believe that God exists?” That's for religious belief.

We also measure religious commitment inventory which is basically, “How many times do you go to church or religious activities? How much you give?” Some religious behavior even daily prayers. With those two different constructs, religious belief and religiosity, we found stable effects that religious people are more likely to engage in negative word of mouth when they encounter that problem. They're more likely to tell their friends about the issue.

Determining Sentiment at Scale

Tod Maffin: I want to ask you in a moment about religious priming, which was one of the solutions you offered, and then how marketers can change what we're doing to try to account for this. Part of the data poll that you had for the Yelp study included the words used in the review. It struck me that that's not an easy thing to discern the true understanding– I'm thinking about the word sick, for instance. Sick could be very negative in the context of a restaurant, but it's also a very positive term that young people use like, “That ride we went on was sick.” How did you determine sentiment at scale?

Riza: I think in our JMR published paper, we did not include the mood analysis for the words. We just use rating as evidence that religious people has lower rating, but we did actually, Todd, analyze the mood in another study which we didn't end up include in our publication. We use LIWC, a sentiment analysis software, where you can actually capture the emotions, either positive or negative emotions from someone's expression.

If someone says something in a review, you can use the software to analyze how many positive words, how many negative words. They do have a dictionary of positive and negative words, and they aggregate everything to measure whether it's positive or negative. We actually found some effects, but because I think we just don't want to complicate the story when we publish a paper, so we didn't end up including it in a final paper. That's a good question, Todd. We did actually analyze the sentiment of the words.

Residents vs. Tourists

Tod Maffin: How did you distinguish between people who were residents of that area and people who were tourists to that area?

Riza: Yes. That's another good question. That's a limitation that we have. That's why the ZIP Code is not a perfect measure for religiosity. Obviously, someone who leave a review in California, may be in less religious counties, state, they might come from Midwest, which is more religious, and vice versa.

Knowing that the data wasn't perfect, we replicate it in a lab study because in a lab study, we can actually measure what you said, “Do you believe in God” and that thing. Across four lab studies and field study, we find converging effects, that the effects are stable across different data.

Are Things Better on Sundays?

Tod Maffin: One of the experiments you did that I thought was fascinating was you looked for a difference in how people reviewed things on Sundays and also in December during what, at least for Christians, is especially a meaningful month. What did you learn about those dates in particular?

Riza: We found that Sundays in December especially, and we didn't try Easter, maybe if we try Easter also, I think it's going to work like Easter weekend. We found that Sundays in December is a natural priming for people. Every Sunday in December, they would more likely think about God, about Jesus, especially in the Christian neighborhood or in highly religious areas or highly religious people, reminded them of Christian beliefs, of how they were taught during Christmas growing up.

Those things bring up their religious values, which are strongly associated with forgiveness.

We argue that on Sundays in December, if things are not as expected in a store or in a restaurant, then you would be more forgiving because you are naturally primed to think about God during those days.

Tod Maffin: Oh, interesting. I see. As a general rule, people who lean more religious tend to have less tolerance for negative behavior from a brand, but on days like Sundays and Christmas, and Easter, they're more forgiving.

Riza: That's right because Sundays act as a natural priming stimuli. We did prove it in our separate lab studies. We asked them to say something, what they think about Sunday and what they think about December? These are different. People, even the non-religious, and we asked them to write an essay or something, and then we analyzed the essay. We found that for non-religious [inaudible 00:09:24] the word Sundays and the word December is always associated with religion or God or things like that.

How Athiests and Different Religions Fare

Tod Maffin: I guess there's two reasons why people will spread negative word of mouth. Either they genuinely want to warn other consumers, or they want to punish the brand, and sometimes both, often both, I think that's fair to say. Did you see a difference between religious and non-religious people in terms of why they spread bad news?

Riza: Contrary to what we believe, apparently religious people do not want to engage in negative word of mouth to help other people. They want to engage in negative word of mouth to vent their anger, vent their frustration. When it's in the revenge scenario, the effects hold. Yes, religious still leads to more negative word of mouth in the revenge scenario, like revenge motivation, but in helping, there's no effect whatsoever.

Again, contrary to what we believe, but it again demonstrates that it's actually the revenge motivation. It drives religious people to engage in negative word of mouth.

Tod Maffin: I know you didn't study the differences between religions, like how Christians might react differently than Jews or Buddhists, but do you have a gut feel on that?

Riza: My gut feeling is if we have enough data, I think they would react similarly because the notion of forgiveness and fairness are pretty common across major religions. Let's say if we do a study in the Middle East where the majority of the response would be Muslim, and then if we use, for example, Friday or Ramadan as their holy month, which is a religious priming stimuli, I think the results will also hold because again, it's the universal value in religion about forgiveness and fairness.

What Is “Religious Priming”?

Tod Maffin: You've mentioned this term religious priming and my reading of your study was that it's possible to turn around this negative word of mouth if you can expose people to this, as you call it religious priming. Can we first talk about what that is? What does that mean?

Riza: Priming is when you– There's this movie, I forgot. It's a Will Smith movie a long time ago. I think he primed the person with a number. When let's say, you see the number 27, throughout the day 27, 27, 27. At the end of the day, you'll be given a choice from a number set, and because you see 27 all the time, you would choose 27. The title of the movie is Focus, I think five, six years ago.

The priming stimuli that we use is basically, we argue that if people keep being exposed to religion, for example, they go to a restaurant they see– And this happened to me when I was in Colorado. I went to a restaurant, I saw a Bible verse, I think Jeremiah 29 verse 11 or something. Everyone, “Oh, okay. This is a Christian establishment” and then it primes me. I would be reminded of value of forgiveness. If things go wrong in that restaurant, I'll be more forgiving.

In a very standard situation would be Christmas because Christmas decorations everywhere, even in the Middle East. In less religious areas in the US, we see Christmas decorations everywhere. The Christmas decorations, especially during Christmas season, is another major religious priming stimuli. We argue that when people are exposed to Christmas decorations or a Christmas song, then it would activate their forgiveness values associated with Christianity.

Tod Maffin: How would we do that? Are we talking about literally dropping religious phrases into our marketing copy in areas where there's a lot of religious people like the American south or something?

Riza: Yes. There are some companies in the US, and it's interesting because maybe we never find anything like this in Australia, but some companies in the US like Forever 21 and also In-N-Out Burger…

Tod Maffin: Hobby Lobby.

Riza: Hobby Lobby. They're very, very, very open about what they believe and they do actually print Bible verse in some of their packaging. In Forever 21, I think, there's John 3:16 in the paper bag. Also for, I believe, In-N-Out Burger in their wrap, they do print some Bible verses there.

Things like that would activate forgiveness when they see that, oh, they're reminded of their religion, especially in highly religious areas, but we found that doing so in less religious areas, may not produce anything or if anything, it can actually maybe even backfire.

Non-religious people looking at Bible verse, they might feel that, oh, they're being evangelized, there are these firms trying to convert them or something, that might actually backfire. I would say firms need to be cautious, not one marketing strategy and packaging strategy for the whole country, especially given in the US has a very diverse population and different areas with different ideological beliefs.

How to Attract the Faithful Without Alienating The “Heathens”

Tod Maffin: Right, and as you mentioned, your own research found that religious priming actually increases negative word of mouth among less religious consumers. How do we do both? How do we religiously prime the religious without alienating atheists?

Riza: It's very hard to do especially in a very mixed area where we don't know, we're not sure what's the dominant ideological beliefs are. There are a lot of areas in the US where it's definitely– Like in Australia we call it's a Bible belt area, where you know people there 90% will be religious, so we can be confident in implementing segmentation strategy, whereas in highly religious areas, firms can be more open about their faith, print Bible verse in their packaging, have more Christmas decoration or even Christmas songs. There are some religious Christmas songs like– Obviously not I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. That's not but–

[chuckling]

Tod Maffin: Not very religious.

Riza: Like O Holy Night, for example. In more religious areas, retailers can be more confident using this religious Christmas song, whereas in less religious areas or when areas where we're not sure it's mixed, then it's better to keep it mainstream so that we don't offend the less religious consumers.

Can Ad Platforms Help us Target?

Tod Maffin: Marketing technology though, might help there, should it not? What you're talking about going at religious priming in the religious areas is that model would work very well for very broad, not particularly focused ad by something in like television. For someone who's marketing on Meta's ad platform, there's less interest targeting than there used to be but certainly, we could infer groups of people that are either into religion or into atheism.

Would it be your recommendation based on the research that you've done, that perhaps if someone is using a platform that can be targeted that way or that people can be reached and separated into those two basic groups, that each group gets a slightly different message, that one group, the religious group gets this religious priming, the other doesn't?

Riza: Definitely, Tod. I think geographically it's hard to do it because again, people move to different areas, but I think from a digital platform, you can easily target people with different religious backgrounds. For example, like myself, I browse some content relating to church or faith, and my wife does the same, so I would be easily targeted by– For example, if firms know my religious belief if something goes wrong, it's a simple email with some religious stimuli like Christmas theme or something or songs, that would induce my mood. It would then activate my forgiveness values.

You're right, Tod, in a way, with the digital segmentation tools that we have right now, it's easier to target people and then offering them different tailored solutions based on their ideological beliefs.

What About Really Bad Brand Failures?

Tod Maffin: Your research looked mostly at everyday service failures. Do you think your findings could also be applied to other types of brand transgressions, like major moral or ethical ones, like the use of child labor, for instance?

Riza: Oh, true. Yes. That's something that we identify in our future research. I would say that can be a boundary condition in a way that may be priming works for everyday failure situations, but when the failure has really have moral implications, like what you say, the use of child labor or underpaying workers. Again, like a strong issue of fairness there, I would say, religious priming would maybe work the other way around. People who are prime with God, maybe actually less forgiving in that situation because that failure relates strongly to fairness issues, beyond their own interests. It's someone else's– Especially for the vulnerable community, so the priming can work the other way around. It can actually make them take more revenge, spread more negative word of mouth, to take this company down because this company violates strong fairness norms among vulnerable communities.

Tod Maffin: There is a point at which Jesus cannot help your brand?

[chuckling]

Riza: That's right. Yes. There's always a limit as to what priming can do and I think, in those situations that you mentioned, the examples you mentioned about moral failure, that definitely can work the other way around.

Summary

Tod Maffin: What surprised you the most about your findings?

Riza: The basic thing that religious people are more harsh when it comes to reviewing things, and they spread more negative word of mouth. It's like they hold this anger inside of them and when there's an opportunity to actually engage– Not engage directly, but to prevent indirectly through negative word of mouth, they would do that. It's a suppression method instead of forgiving automatically.

When I also read the psychology literature, I found that, yes, religious people are not always forgiving because it's deep inside, and we found that you need to activate, you need to remind people about their beliefs so that they forgive. It's not something that is automatic. Forgiveness is something that needs to be triggered among religious people.

Why Riza Wanted to Study This

Tod Maffin: I'm curious to know what made you want to study this.

Riza: Religion has always been an important part of my life growing up. When I started my academic career, it wasn't easy to publish on religious stuff because there was not much interest on it, especially in marketing literature.

About six, eight years ago, there was this paper in psychology science, I think, about priming which then leads to emerging interest in marketing management, in business literature to study the importance of religion. I was one of the first pioneer working on the topic. When we found the converging evidence from Yelp and lab studies, we know this is something that general marketing research would love, because we have different multiple perspectives from different data points, to prove that religion is not something simple. The effects are not always something we expect, that marketers need to be wary of the effects of religion on consumer behavior.