Effects of online service failure on customers’ intentions to complain online

Keywords:
online complaint, customer complaint, complaint intention, service failure attribution, scope of impact of service failure, customer inoculation
Abstract

Dissatisfied customers are increasingly voicing complaints through social media following online service failures; therefore, it is important to clarify the motivational determinants of customers’ online complaint intentions (COCI). We investigated in 3 studies the influence and interaction effects of service failure types, attributions about these failures, scope of impact of the failures, and customer inoculation on both public and private online complaint intentions. Participants were 451 college students from Hainan Province, China. The results show that service failure types, service failure attributions, scope of impact of the service failure, and customer inoculation each had distinct effects on COCI and how customers complain online, and that these factors also had interactive effects on online complaint actions. Our finding that the form of COCI can predict service failure attributes offers implications for the implementation of enterprise service recovery from a consumer perspective.

Author Biographies
  1. Xing'an Xu, Hainan University
    Tourism College
  2. Luqi Wang, Hainan University
    Tourism College
  3. Lilei Wang, Hainan University
    Tourism College
  4. Kaini Xue, Hainan University
    Tourism College
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Published
2020-07-16
Section
Articles
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