When injured product users may also stay satisfied: A macro-level analysis

Product-harm crises literature has mostly studied product user harm proxies i.e., risk of injury or fictitious crises. Our macro-level study is the first to determine the consequences of actual non-automobile product-related injuries on customer satisfaction. We leverage a dataset statistically representative of injuries reported at over 5,000 U.S. hospitals. Employing the expectation-disconfirmation paradigm, we study 800 product categories, 52 industries and 30 injury diagnoses to find that severe product-related injury (SPI), on average, hurts customer satisfaction. Our research reveals that varying types of consumers’ expectations can result in asymmetric effects. Consumer sentiment and future growth may set varying boundary conditions for product users’ expectations; while higher consumer sentiment is found to worsen the association between SPI and customer satisfaction, future economic growth attenuates that relationship. Also, the type of hospital may help account for consumers’ disconfirmation of product beliefs, as it is found to improve the negative effect of SPI.