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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of complaint behaviour and service recovery satisfaction on consumer intentions to repurchase through internet channels.

Using survey data from large consumer samples from 15 European countries, the authors classify consumers according to: whether they had negative experiences with online purchases, whether they complained, and whether they were satisfied with the complaint handling. A logistic regression analysis assesses the effects of these experiences on repurchase intentions.

Remarkable differences arise among the consumers with respect to intentions to repurchase on the internet. Consumers with negative experiences who complained expressed higher repurchase intentions than consumers with no reason to complain and also than consumers who had negative experiences but did not complain. Yet the highest repurchase intentions arose among consumers who complained and expressed satisfaction with the complaint handling, in support of the service recovery paradox in an online setting.

This project is one of the first empirical studies of the consequences of dissatisfaction and complaints related to online purchase behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate public online consumer complaint responses from three different perspectives: the complainer, the company and third party consumers. Consumer complaint behaviour and management has been studied in various streams of literature, yet the subsequent processes triggered by a company complaint response have not been studied so far. In particular, this paper seeks to divert from examining complaint participants in isolation by recognising interrelated communication effects of complaint dialogue and public media.

Looking at credibility perceptions as a theoretical construct for measuring the utility of a complaint as well as attitude‐orientation as an evaluative moderator, the paper highlights the ambiguity of meaning transfer in an online complaint forum.

It is hypothesised that credibility and congruence in attitude orientation positively enhance complaint utility perceptions and strongly bias complaint dialogue evaluations.

The paper highlights that expected relevant results for online complaint managers and marketers alike are the inclusion of post‐complaint communication into corporate image and relationship management as well as using credibility perceptions as a benchmark for online customer satisfaction and potential positive electronic word‐of‐mouth.

This paper analyses how the purchase channel and customer complaint goals affect the sequential choice of post–purchase complaint channels when customers experience a service failure followed by a service recovery failure (double deviation).

An online survey involving a scenario manipulation was conducted with 577 apparel shoppers. The study employs multi-group latent class analysis to estimate latent customer segments within both online and offline groups of shoppers and compare latent classes between the two groups.

The results show that the purchase channel has a lock-in effect on the complaint channel, which is stronger for offline buyers. Moreover, there is evidence of channel synergy effects in the case of having to complain twice: shoppers who complain in store in the first attempt turn to online channels in the second complaint attempt, and vice versa. Complaint goals shape the choice of complaint channels and define different shopper segments.

The present study is the first to adopt a cross-stage approach that analyses the dependencies between the purchase channel and the complaint channel used on two subsequent occasions: the first complaint after a service failure and the second following a service recovery failure.

This paper aims to demonstrate that online complainants’ reactions to a company’s service recovery attempts (webcare) can significantly vary across two different types of dissatisfied customers (“vindictives” vs “constructives”), who have dramatically diverging complaint goal orientations.

Online multi-country survey among 812 adult consumers who recently had a dissatisfying brand experience and turned to a marketer-generated social media site to voice an online complaint for achieving their ultimate complaining goals. Scenario-based online experiment for cross-validating the survey findings.

Results suggest that “vindictive complainants” – driven dominantly by brand-adverse motives – are immune to any form of webcare, while “constructive complainants” – interested in restoring the customer-brand relationship – react more sensitively. For the latter, “no-responses” often trigger detrimental brand-related reactions (e.g. unfavorable brand image), whereas “defensive responses” are likely to stimulate post-webcare negative word-of-mouth.

This research identifies the gains and harms of (un-)desired webcare. By doing so, it not only sheds light on the circumstances when marketers have to fear negative effects (e.g. negative word-of-mouth) but also provides insights into the conditions when such effects are unlikely. While the findings of the cross-sectional survey are validated with an online experiment, findings should be interpreted with care as other complaining contexts should be further investigated.

Marketers have to expect a serious “backfiring effect” from an unexpected source, namely, consumers who were initially benevolent toward the involved brand but who received an inappropriate response.

This research is one of the first research studies that enables marketers to identify situations when webcare is likely to backfire on the brand after a service failure.

The purpose of this empirical research is to investigate the influence of interactive virtually present others (VPOs) on a firm response and customers’ reiterated complaints (follow-ups) during service failures. This research follows up on previous experimental studies that suggest VPOs affect the focal customers’ complaint intention.

More than 16,000 posts (of complaints and complainants’ follow-ups) on 13 airline Facebook pages were analyzed using partial least squares.

This empirical study found that customers’ complaints are attended to the extent the complaints are followed up with more comments as supported by VPOs suggesting a contagion effect. Besides, it appears, the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the grease. The interactive virtual presence of others does not have an effect on a firm response toward them, despite their support to complainants and calling the airline to act.

To date, previous experimental studies have only featured a single VPO in potential complainants’ responses; however, in this empirical study the authors take into consideration the interaction of several VPOs in the service failure. Also, the focus is on the influence of VPOs on customers' complaints rather than the other way around.

This research aims to scrutinize the negative reviews regarding the 5-star chain hotels and the e-responses on TripAdvisor, to categorize the complaints declared in the review texts, to provide better understanding of the online problem-solving methods of hotels and their corporate approach to e-complaints and to reveal the post-vacation electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) behaviours of the complaining tourists.

Within the scope of this research, 404 negative reviews and 364 e-responses are subject to an extensive content analysis. A total of 1,655 tourist e-complaints which were mentioned in the negative online reviews are categorized according to their subject matters and grouped under main themes. The e-responses of hotels and statements of e-complaining tourists regarding post-vacation experience are analysed in detail based on a qualitative research approach.

As a result of the research, 82 sub-themes within 11 complaint categories are determined, and it is found out that the e-complaints mainly focus on “food and beverage services”, “room comfort” and “hotel staff”. The hotel management mainly implemented problem-solving strategies such as “request for future patronage, a recovery plan as a result of the detailed analysis of the problem and warning to the relevant department performing poor service” as well as giving unsatisfactory “cliché responses”. Dissatisfied tourists performed negative e-WOM behaviours by using abusing expressions in review text, recommending different hotel alternatives, failing to recommend the hotel and expressing that they would not return.

Combing through negative e-reviews which include wide range of complaints of disappointed tourists and the statements which reveal post-vacation tendencies and feelings, the e-responses of hotels that are providing insight regarding the corporate approach to negative feedbacks and formation of post-vacation relations between the hotel and customers, the paper adopts a qualitative and utilitarian approach. The originality of the paper stems from its elaborative context analysis and balanced comparison of three 5-star luxury chain resort hotels located on the shores of the Mediterranean with almost similar quality standards and guest relations/public relations (GR/PR) departments that represent corporate identity. To this respect, the research is thought to be original in quality and can fill out the gap in the tourism literature. Presenting conceptual framework and practical information, the paper is predicted to guide the future studies, tourism marketers, travel consultants, PR/GR staff and managers employed in hospitality businesses.

To provide an initial framework for online third party complaining and complimenting behavior as a consequence of online product or customer service failure or success, using a third party consumer evaluation web site.

Based on critical incidents supplied by consumers in a third party consumer forum web site, a clear picture of the type and frequency of online service failures and successes is expected to develop using critical incident technique and scientific text analyzing methods for qualitative analysis.

The speed of shipping, shipping materials or packaging and customer service appear to be critical for the online transaction to be a success. Ease of ordering was shown to influence the likelihood of complimenting the most. The results provided support for the existence of bivalent satisfiers, monovalent satisfiers and monovalent dissatisfiers within the online retail environment.

Text analyzer has certain software limitations that should be considered. While searching for word patterns, it is possible for the software to use one of several clustering methods, which may be open to subjective interpretation to some extent. The quantitative portion of the study was also limited by the four attribute categories that were used by the online third party web site.

The results provide very practical information and impartial advice for online retailers to improve their service by managing reputation in third party consumer evaluations.

Provides an initial step towards understanding the nature of online store third party complimenting and complaining behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the findings and lessons that were learned from the many cases of internet fraud complaints that are gathered by the Federal Trade Commission in the USA. The implications that are contained in the behavior of the complaints and trends identified are critical for addressing all types of online criminal activities in the increasing world of cybercrimes.

Data for this paper are extracted from the Consumer Sentinel Network Data Handbook covering a period of 13 years. Using the raw data, the occurrences were plotted and trends (number of cycles, time between cycles, and leading state and lagging states) were identified. Descriptive statistics covering the 13 years were examined and discussed. Using 20002 as the base year, the rate of growth of each of the states were ranked annually and were tested for stability and predictability using non-parametric approaches.

The key findings are indigenous to the occurrences of online fraud complaints in the USA. However, as the leading nation with the best database on fraud complaints, the findings are mission critical to fraud prevention across the globe. Specifically, this study found that since 2002, there have been four distinct cycles. Each cycle is clearly noticeable because there is a rapid growth in the number of crime complaints in the beginning half of the period followed by a slowing down period. However, the speed of change from one cycle to the next is steeper and the time gap is faster. While it is true that from the perspective of all the 50 states, the ranks appear to change every year and thus are not stable. However, the majority of the changes are relatively small so their relative positions by rank are still predictable.

The paper extends existing understanding of online fraud occurrences in the USA. The findings are timely and based on longitudinal data that span over a decade. The four new cycles identified are critical to the body of knowledge. The observed change in time from one cycle to another and its changes from a mathematic to a geometric one are also new. The findings are invaluable to persons working in law enforcement related occupations (auditors, lawyers, forensic experts, among others) and who must deal with the increasing problem of online fraud and cybercrimes.

In the last ten years, businesses taking advantage of market deregulation, call‐centre, intranet and internet technology have broken traditional marketing norms and path‐dependent customer management practices. These businesses offer substantially lower prices and good customer service. In spite of anecdotal evidence of the high level of service complaints in the press, these businesses are expanding rapidly by growing the market and by taking share from traditional suppliers. Service failure recovery and complaint management are two areas which are extensively re‐designed by such businesses. This paper aims to identify and examine such new practices. The authors suggest that the traditional “customer‐centricity” model is being replaced by a “customer‐compliance business model” (CCBM) of service provision. This new model and its propositions defy conventional thinking in the areas of service recovery and complaint management.

Available data and research are reviewed, in an attempt to understand CCBM. Differences with the customer‐centricity model are discussed.

CCBM cannot be explained adequately by current assumptions in marketing. It breaks commonplace marketing expectations about service failure and recovery.

The emphasis is on explaining innovations in service recovery and complaint management.

Companies which operate the CCBM model are of growing importance to developed, service‐oriented economies. The paper builds on evidence to show how CCBM businesses have abandoned or minimised costly customer centricity and have broken past norms and conventional marketing thinking and practice.

The scarcity of research in this area is explained by the recent, rapid evolution of these new model businesses. The study reveals and makes sense of important trends in service provision, distinct from and incompatible with normative arguments in some academic writings that advocate service recovery excellence.

Customer complaints and service recovery via virtual customer service channels (VCSCs) present unique recovery situations unlike those commonly found in traditional complaint handling channels. Some of these distinct challenges include the presence of multiple customers during a recovery, which creates the possibility for uncivil customer-to-customer (C2C) exchanges to harm a complainant’s experience. To this end, this paper aims to explore customer- and firm-level aspects as they relate to social media complaint handling. A customer-level moderator (attitude toward complaining) and a firm-level moderator (relative promptness of the response) are examined.

Data from three studies use partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze hypothetical failure and complaining scenarios on VCSCs. Study 1A (a firm’s social media channel) and Study 1B (a firm’s online support community) investigate how a complainant’s predisposition toward complaining ultimately influences their experiential value (hedonic, pragmatic and sociability) during a virtual service recovery that includes uncivil communication from another customer. Study 2 further examines how the relative promptness of a service provider’s response either before or after uncivil C2C interactions hinders a complainant’s experiential value during the service recovery encounter.

The results show support for the influence of attitude toward complaining and the relative promptness of response as impactful to a complainant’s hedonic, pragmatic and social experience in virtual service encounters that involve one customer rudely interjecting into a complainant’s online service recovery encounter.

This research is one of the first to apply both customer- and firm-level moderating aspects associated with virtual service recovery encounters. The studies quantitatively assess the moderators’ influence on online dysfunctional behavior’s relationship with C2C fairness perceptions, and the subsequent experiential value a complainant receives on VCSCs. In particular, the investigation of relative promptness of a service provider’s response is a unique conceptualization that expands prior recovery studies’ focus on promptness or quickness of a recovery. The authors put forth a more prompt response that benefits the firm by purposively and symbolically closing out the encounter on VCSC, which somewhat reduces the negative effects of rude follow-up comments. This study is also novel because of the experiential focus on C2C interactions during recovery, rather than focusing on how a firm resolves a failure. In addition, this is the first service recovery study to assess multiple types of online customer service channels. Implications are put forth for service recovery theory and managers who attend to customer complaints on virtual channels.