Abstract: Prior research in psychology and marketing indicates that consumers’ negative emotions will impact their information processing, and the results vary according to types of negative emotions. Though plenty of research discussed how negative emotions influence information processing, little research has considered the moderation effect of negative emotions in brand relationship restoration management. This research introduces negative emotions as moderators and proposes that in order to improve brand relationship management, the firm should take consumers’ negative emotions into account to select the appropriate persuasion strategy.
Related literature identifies two types of persuasion strategies: couterargumentation response strategy and diagnosticity response strategy. Considering consumers’ specific negative emotions, the firm should make the following decision: for consumers in low level of negative emotions, it is better to use couterargumentation response strategy; for consumers in high level of negative emotions, it is better to use couterargumentation response strategy if they feel regret and diagnosticity response strategy if they feel angry. Consumer forgiveness will mediate the relationship between persuasion strategy and brand relationship restoration intention.
Two experiments verify our hypotheses. One hundred and two undergraduate students participated in experiment 1. They first read scenarios for negative emotions manipulation and then a scenario about persuasion strategies. Finally, they answered questionnaires about their forgiveness and brand relationship restoration intention. The results showed that compared with consumers who feel angry (regret), couterargumentation response strategy (diagnosticity response strategy) is more likely to make consumers who feel regret (angry) forgive the target brand and extend their relationship. One hundred and thirty- five undergraduate students participated in experiment 2. This experiment last two weeks to manipulate the levels of negative emotions. In the first week, participants read scenarios for negative emotions manipulation and answered questionnaires. In the second week, these participants recalled their negative emotions and then filled questionnaires. Results showed that for consumers in low level of negative emotions, there is no significant difference between two types of negative emotions (regret and angry) for persuasion strategy; for consumers in high level of negative emotions, the moderation effect of the types of negative emotions is significant.
The theoretical contribution of this research is to introduce both type and magnitude of negative emotions into brand relationship restoration management research. Besides, our research implies that a firm should firstly consider consumers’ magnitude of negative emotions and then their types when selecting persuasion strategy.

Key words: persuasion strategy, negative emotion, forgiveness, brand relationship restoration