A wise lesson from science: How to turn a negative thing into a positive thing

One of my favorite proverbs is the English proverb “Every cloud has a silver lining.” It betrays my optimistic view of the world. I’m the type of battery that recharges itself when I can turn a negative tempo into a positive one.
Turning negativity into positive is an increasing challenge for today’s marketers. After all, we live in a world where reviews determine the commercial value of a product or service. When buying a new book, pair of shoes, or a hotel room online, nearly every consumer looks at customer experiences of people they don’t know at all. These experiences with others randomly color our judgment. The five-star rating makes us buy a little faster, while one star makes us cancel the purchase. Which is why negative review is every marketer’s fear.

It takes twenty years and five minutes to build a reputation to destroy. If you think about it, you’ll do things differently.

Warren Buffett

In the science of marketing, the topic of negative reviews has been frequently investigated in recent years. This is also the case in Journal of Marketing, the scientific journal that has had Triple A status for years. I found out about this topic article With a surprising plot twist: a negative review doesn’t have to be a negative for a company at all!

Scientists have investigated a whole series of studies in which a negative review can have a positive effect, as long as the review reader considers the negative personality to be unfair. The moment a client or potential customer considers someone else’s negative review unfair, they develop feelings of empathy toward the company. In turn, this sympathy can lead the customer to consider purchasing the product anyway; Not in spite of the negative review but precisely thanks to the negative review. So the researchers argue that smart companies do not ignore negative reviews, but rather use them strategically to their advantage (for some examples from practice: see Web Extension K. Associated with the study). Business optimistic!

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What Marketers Can Learn From Sigrid Kaag

During the elections in the Netherlands, the Sigrid Kaag campaign team cleverly used this mechanism, as the negative message is perceived as unfair and thus generates sympathy. At the start of the campaign, the politician received an unprecedented torrent of negative messages under the headline #KutKaag. Instead of ignoring this negative mudslide, Cage used negative messages strategically: they showed that the messages were not fair. Cage worked hard to educate the voter that negative messages were the result of a pattern in society in which female leaders are treated differently from male leaders.

At Volkswagen Krant Analyze Loes Reijmer Be posted Investigation Toward sexism in the political arena, by Groene Amsterdammer and Utrecht University, for Sigrid Kaag it was a game of change. The search results showed that #KutKaag was part of the. As a result, Kag was able to literally remedy dishonesty and this deception slowly penetrated the minds of the Dutch electorate. Then this lie turned into feelings of sympathy for Mrs. Cag. The result: Sigrid Kaag was an election winner. Learn from science and Sigrid Kaag’s good example.

Don’t cover up negative comments and don’t pretend they don’t exist. Also, do not shoot with a straight leg in defense. Show negative reviews are not fair and restore people’s minds and hearts.

About this column:

In a weekly column, Bert Overlak wrote it alternately, Evelyn Van ZeelandEugene Franken, Helen Kardan, Katleen Gabriels, Bernd Maier-Leppla and Colinda de Beer, Innovation Origins try to figure out what the future will look like. These columnists, sometimes supplemented by guest bloggers, work in their own way to find solutions to the problems of our time. So tomorrow it will be good. Here are all the previous episodes.

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