CAUSES AND OUTCOMES OF ONLINE CUSTOMER COMPLAINING BEHAVIOR: IMPLICATIONS FOR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

The purpose of this study is to investigate causes of complaints and customer actions that appeared in Negative Feedback Systems (NFS).

Abstract

Handling customer complaints has been issued in the traditional market place with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. However, online studies have rarely addressed the importance of the customer complaining behavior. How e-businesses handle customers’ “complaining behavior” has been referred to as the critical “moment of truth” [Tax et al. 1998] in managing and developing customer loyalty and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The purpose of this study is to investigate causes of complaints and customer actions that appeared in Negative Feedback Systems (NFS). Causes of complaints have been generated from a disparity between customers’ expectation in the pre-purchase stage and disconfirmation in the post-purchase stage. Survey data provides the most critical factors based on customer expectations of products, technology issues, and Web assessment factors –i.e., factors such as information, agreement, settlement, and the community phase-. Additionally, customer actions have been gathered from the data in online.