Schadenfreude and product failures: the role of product deservingness and product status

ABSTRACT

This article examines the influence of product considerations on the experience of schadenfreude – taking pleasure in the suffering of another consumer. We examine how schadenfreude is affected by the extent to which the person suffering a product failure deserves to own the product and the status of the failed product. This work also explicitly considers how these factors interact with those of the person observing the misfortune. These ideas are tested across three experiments. The results show that high product status increases schadenfreude via its exacerbating effects on envy and that a lack of perceived product deservingness increases schadenfreude via both envy and deservingness. These effects differ based on the corresponding factors of the observer where the observer’s own deservingness and lack of product status are found to exacerbate schadenfreude via envy.

KEYWORDS:

• Schadenfreude
• product failure
• deservingness
• envy
• status

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://twitter.com/Wendys/status/534411973371650050.

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJO5-_7Nghw.

3. http://aadvertisingtoday.blogspot.ca/2010/05/barclays-premier-you-deserve-it.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ethan Pancer

Ethan Pancer (Ph.D., Queen’s University) is an assistant professor of Marketing at Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada.

Lindsay McShane (Ph.D., Queen’s University) is an assistant professor of Marketing at Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada.

Maxwell Poole (B.Com., Saint Mary’s University) is a research associate at Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada.