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This paper seeks to explore the nature of complaint satisfaction with particular emphasis on the qualities and behaviours that male and female customers value during personal complaint‐handling service encounters.

A semi‐standardized qualitative technique called laddering was used to reveal the cognitive structures of complaining female and male customers. In total, 40 laddering interviews with 21 female and 19 male respondents with complaining experience were conducted.

The research indicates that being taken seriously in the complaint encounter together with the employee's competence, friendliness and active listening skills are particularly important for both male and female complainants. Females were more able than male respondents to develop strong associations on the highest level of abstraction and linked desired employee behaviors with several values. Female customers tended to be more emotionally involved than male customers as they wanted employees to apologize for the problem and sometimes needed time to calm down and relax. By contrast, male complainants were mainly interested in a quick complaint solution.

Owing to the exploratory nature of the study in general and the scope and size of its sample in particular, the findings are tentative in nature. As the study involved students from one university, the results cannot be generalized beyond this group, even though in this case the student sample is likely to represent the general buying public.

If companies know what female and male customers expect, contact employees may be trained to adapt their behaviour to their customers' underlying expectations, which should have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. For this purpose, the paper offers several suggestions to managers to improve active complaint management.

The findings enrich the existing limited stock of knowledge on complaint management by developing a deeper understanding of the attributes that complaining male and female customers expect from customer contact employees, as well as the underlying logic for these expectations.

This paper reports findings from a small scale study exploring the role gender plays in the interactions between customers and front‐line staff in DIY retailing. Drawing on materials gathered through observations, informal discussions with staff and focus groups, this study suggests that “maleness” pervades many aspects of DIY retailing. For the respondents the image of the case retailer, B&Q, and the products sold had male connotations. Furthermore, male customers perceived male customer‐facing staff to have better knowledge of technical DIY than female employees, even though this was not always the case. Given the rising interest from women in home improvements, it would appear that measures need to be put in place to create a more “inclusive” DIY store environment for female customers, and one that challenges the stereotypical assumptions held by many male home improvement customers.

This paper aims to examine the joint effect of the focal customer’s gender and fellow customer’s gender in influencing voice complaint intentions and intention to convey negative word of mouth (NWOM).

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two dining conditions (same-gender fellow customer vs opposite-gender fellow customer). Their intention to voice a complaint and to spread NWOM were measured after reading a scenario describing a service failure. A 2 (focal customer gender: male vs female) × 2 (fellow customer: same gender vs opposite gender) between-subjects quasi-experimental design was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that female customers’ voice complaint intentions were significantly higher when a fellow customer’s gender was female rather than male. In contrast, regardless of the fellow customer’s gender, no significant differences in voice complaint intentions were found among male customers. The results further indicate that voice complaint intentions mediate the impact of a fellow customer’s gender on intention to spread NWOM among female customers. However, both female and male participants show equally high levels of voice complaint intentions in the context of fine-dining restaurant.

This study broadens the understanding of customer complaining behavior and also provides insights to practitioners on how to manage customers who are in same- and mixed-gender situations.

This research extends the literature on agency–communal theory and complaining behaviors by examining the role of a fellow customer’s gender influencing the focal customer’s intentions to voice complaints and to spread NWOM.

This paper aims to articulate the gender differences in the influence of service quality on online consumer behavior.

Through data collected via a Web-based questionnaire survey from 330 consumers in China, this study builds and analyzes a structural equation model, using five dimensions of E-service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and focuses on the moderation test of gender.

This study finds that first, efficiency dimension of e-service quality is of same importance for male and female customers; second, there are significant gender differences in the responsiveness and reliability dimensions of E-service quality, which affect customer satisfaction; third, the impact of female customer satisfaction on customer loyalty is stronger than for male customers.

Online retailers with limited service resources should preferentially respond to service requests from male customers and provide more reliable services for female consumers under the same condition.

The research validated the applicability of self-regulation theory in online consumer behavior, explored the occurrence stage and characteristics of gender differences in online consumer behavior under influence of SRT and first found some apparent gender differences in the influence of different dimensions of e-service quality on online consumer behavior.

Although trade volumes in e-retailing have increased significantly in recent years, logistics service failures are inevitable, especially at the delivery stage. Therefore, it is essential to provide customers with effective recovery strategies to increase their satisfaction and repurchase intentions. There is a lack of empirical evidence on whether the response time or the discount offered in compensation is more crucial for customers. Therefore, this study aims to determine whether the response time or the discount offered for high and low criticality failures has a greater impact on customer satisfaction levels and repurchase intentions for female and male customers.

A scenario-based experimental design method has been adopted to collect data, and 697 participants aged 18 and 58 years have been reached. The research utilized a between-subjects design, incorporating three factors: gender (female vs male), criticality (high vs low) and compensation (7 days: 10% discount, 10 days: 20% discount and 14 days: 30% discount). Six scenarios depicting the failure of an online retailer were created, and factorial univariate ANOVA was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The study's results show that in terms of customer satisfaction, female customers attach more importance to the response time in the case of high criticality and the amount of discount offered in the case of low criticality. On the other hand, male customers give more importance to the response time in terms of customer satisfaction when they experience a high or low criticality failure. In the case of low criticality, response time is more important for male customers to increase their repurchase intentions, while the amount of the discount is more important for female customers.

The study demonstrates the relative importance of the response time and discount amount according to the criticality level of failures and to guide business managers in terms of the recovery strategies they will implement. It focuses on gender differences and determine whether the response time or discount amount is more important for male and female customers in high or low-criticality situations.

In the preceding article “Consumer research in the restaurant environment, Part 2”, the operationalisation of the theoretical model of dining satisfaction and return patronage (IJCHM, Vol. 11 No. 6), was developed and described. This was preceded by Part 1 (IJCHM, Vol. 11 No. 5), in which a model of dining satisfaction and return patronage was proposed and conceptualised. Based on an extensive review of the relevant consumer behaviour literature, proposed model (Part 1), the development of the research instrument, sampling frame and procedures (Part 2), and the analytical analysis used in the study, this paper is the final contribution to the three‐part series and it reports on the findings of the study. Overall, the encouraging results of this study can be summarised as having provided: a clearer understanding of customers’ dining satisfaction perceptions; a clearer understanding of restaurants attribute performance that determine satisfaction as a consequence of dining experience; and a robust prediction of return as a result of dining satisfaction.

The advantage of relationship marketing strategies over discrete transactional activity is now widely recognized in banking and financial services markets. This has triggered research to identify the factors perceived by customers to be important in the development of ongoing relationships with front line staff. Sales personnel′s level of customer orientation, trust and ethical credibility has received much attention. Adds to previous research by analysing the role of gender in the development of buyer‐seller relationships. While there has been much research into gender differences in buyer behaviour on the one hand, and in sales effectiveness on the other, the combined effects of gender interaction have received little attention. Reports a survey of customers of financial advisers which compares dyads of gender‐defined buyer‐seller groups using constructs commonly found in both the relationship marketing and the social psychology literature. The results indicate that dyads do exhibit significant differences in terms of buyers′ perceptions of some aspects of relationship quality. However, the expected result that female sellers are perceived by buyers as showing more empathy and less selling orientation does not occur in a simple manner. The interaction with the gender of the buyer is important in determining perceptions of these aspects of relationship quality.

The purpose of this study was to assess the utility of the homophily theory and the related concept of source similarity which predict that a male salesperson is more effective in serving male customers, and a female is more effective with females. For products designed to enhance female attractiveness, however, Darwinian theories of reproduction suggest that a male may be more effective than a female in dealing with female customers. This study of Hong Kong consumers examined the possibility and, in doing so, challenged the assumed utility of homophily in selling cosmetics.

Two studies were conducted. The first was an experiment where female subjects were asked to report their responses to female and male salespersons selling cosmetics. The second study was a phenomenological study exploring the responses of female customers who had encountered male salespeople in cosmetics shops.

The experiment found that a male salesperson tended to induce significantly stronger purchase intention than a female, and that salesperson credibility (specifically, trustworthiness and attractiveness) plays a significant role in mediating the impact of salesperson gender on purchase intention. The follow-up phenomenological study of female customers who had encountered male salespeople in cosmetics shops supported the experimental findings and offered additional support for their evolutionary basis.

Darwinian theories of reproduction and source credibility together offer a more complete explanation for the effectiveness of salespeople in the gender-sensitive cosmetics market. However, the experiment involved creating fictitious salespeople matched for trust, expertise and attractiveness. The artificiality of the treatments was necessary to construct a controlled scenario to uphold internal validity, but it may limit the generalizability of the results.

To encourage a positive consumer response, retailers need to consider salesperson gender and training. In some specific contexts (such as the selling of products designed to enhance female attractiveness), male salespeople ought to be used ahead of female salespeople, and those male salespeople need to have high credibility to be effective. However, as such, salesmen may not be seen as more expert than saleswomen; expertise needs to be an area of focus in terms of salesperson training.

The results of previous research testing homophily theory suggest that a salesperson of the same gender as the customer ought to induce stronger purchase intentions. This study has shown that for the selling of appearance-related products, gender heterophily may be more effective than homophily. Darwinian interpretations of intrasexual rivalry and courtship might help explain why males sell cosmetics more effectively.

Scholars have acknowledged gender-role ideology as a central factor in flirting style. This study aims to exam the combined effect of flirting type and flirter's sex on positive and adverse customer reactions.

In Study 1, participants (N = 555) were divided into four scenario conditions in a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design: server sex (male vs female) and flirting type (authentic vs fake). Study 1 scenarios explored positive customer outcomes (i.e. loyalty and tip size). Study 2 applied the same research design, presenting participants (N = 404) scenarios relating to negative outcomes (i.e. anger and sense of threat).

The findings revealed that the flirter’s sex significantly moderated the relationship between flirting type and customers’ (the targets’) reactions.

This research offers three primary contributions. First, it elaborates on the dynamics of flirting in service settings (i.e. face-to-face interactions between the service provider and customer). Second, as the effects of flirting on its targets have been reported as equivocal (perceived as pleasing and flattering or, in contrast, annoying, deceptive and misleading), this study explores its positive and negative customer-related outcomes. Third, the study seeks to better understand the impact of a flirting service employee’s sex on customers’ outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to examine the female consumer’s intention to shop online. The rising number of female online shoppers has compelled the analysts and online vendors to believe that understanding the attitude and behaviour of the female consumers is very crucial for their growth.

A conceptual model is proposed that expands the theory of reasoned action (TRA) with three additional constructs, namely, trust, convenience and customer service. The proposed model is examined with the help of questionnaire responses collected from 909 online shoppers from India.

The paper empirically shows that there is a significant influence of attitude, convenience, customer service and subjective norm on the female consumer’s intention to buy online. Customer service acts as the most crucial factor in influencing the attitude of female consumers towards online shopping. The paper also points out that trust does not directly affect the female’s intention to shop online but indirectly influences it through attitude.

The paper has significant implications for practitioners. First, the results advocate that convenience and customer service are the vital antecedents to both behavioural intention and behavioural attitude. Second, the paper also showcases that trust influences behavioural intention indirectly through attitude, stressing the need for the online retailers to develop consumers’ trust in online shopping.

The paper examines TRA framework in the context of female online shopping, while earlier studies have concentrated completely on efficiency-based software tools like word processing, spreadsheets, etc. The integration of the three constructs – trust, convenience and customer service – in the TRA framework has not been studied in the past. The interaction effect of the different elements of customer services on the female consumer behaviour has never been examined in the previous research works.