Organizational Responses to Consumer Complaints: A Re-Examination of the Impact of Organizational Messages in Response to Service and Product-Based Failures

Abstract

This paper introduces an integrative model of consumer complaining behavior, in which effort is posited as the critical determinant of consumer complaint voicing in first-stage CCB. It is necessary to distinguish between first-stage and latter-stage complaining because: 1. Most dissatisfied consumers still do not voice complaints despite the best efforts of practitioners who prefer to hear complaints voiced directly to them. 2. Latter-stage complainants have already identified themselves as dissatisfied by voicing complaints. 3. Their behavior tends to be responsive to recovery attempts rather than to initial dissatisfying experiences. The Effort Model (EM) suggests that anticipated effort mediates the relationship between CCR and well-known antecedents such as product importance, assertiveness, attitude toward complaining, experience, and time constraints. It is suggested that firms can increase the proportion of consumers voicing complaints by taking actions to reduce the amount of effort required to complain.