How Does Culture Impact Customer Evaluation in Online Complaining?

This article investigates how customers' cultural orientation impacts their service evaluations when complaining online on social media. Two separate scenario-based experimental studies were conducted using non-student samples from two culturally diverse countries (Germany and India). Study 1 using 83 participants from Germany and 83 from India shows that when causal explanations for service failure are given, individualists have higher perceived justice. Study 2 with 81 participants from Germany and 82 from India shows that when cognitive control is given through regular updates during service recovery to high uncertainty avoidance seekers, they show higher perceived justice. The three independent justice dimensions positively influence recovery satisfaction, with informational justice showing the strongest impact, followed by procedural and distributive justice. This research thus contributes to the nascent literature in social media complaining. Managers of online service organizations can benefit from these findings when developing their complaint management strategies.

Does Culture of Origin Have an Impact on Online Complaining Behaviors? The Perceptions of Asians and Non-Asians

The main purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the online complaining behavior of Asian and non-Asian hotels guests who have posted negative hotel reviews on TripAdvisor to voice their dissatisfaction towards a select set of hotel service attributes. A qualitative content analysis of texts which relied on manual coding was used while examining 2020 online complaining reviews directed at 353 UK hotels and posted by visitors originating from 63 countries. The results from the word frequency analysis reveal that both Asian and non-Asian travelers tend to put more emphasis on Booking and Reviews when posting complaints online. Based on a manual qualitative content analysis, 11 different major online complaint categories and 65 sub-categories were identified. Among its important findings, results of this study show that non-Asian guests frequently make complaints which are longer and more detailed than Asian customers. Managerial implications and opportunities for future studies are also discussed.

From power to punishment: consumer empowerment and online complaining behaviors

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how psychological empowerment affects individuals’ likelihood of publicly punishing a company with whom they had unsatisfactory experiences through online complaining behaviors. Design/methodology/approach A 3 (intrapersonal empowerment: high/low/control) by 3 (interactional empowerment: high/low/control) online experiment was designed using the priming technique. Following the priming tasks, participants were given a scenario in which a restaurant failed their expectations followed by dependent and control measures. Findings Results revealed a significant main effect of interactional empowerment: participants in the low interactional empowerment condition reported being less likely to engage in the revenge-motivated online public complaining behaviors than participants in the control condition. The study also found a significant interaction effect between interactional and intrapersonal empowerment. Practical implications The study findings yield practical application for crisis management and relationship management. Understanding the linkage between power and online complaining behaviors should help corporate communication professionals to better perform risk assessment, environmental scanning and crisis communication and management. Originality/value Limited empirical studies have investigated the linkage between empowerment and online complaining behaviors in the consumer context. The present study fills this gap by conceptualizing online public complaining as a revenge-motivated behavior. The study yields both theoretical and practical implications.

Seasonality of consumers' third-party online complaining behavior

We examined consumer complaining behavior on a third-party website at different times during a 1-year period, with a focus on seasonal differences in complaints made during the year. We collected 1,799 complaints as data from the website and applied both content analysis and critical incident technique to identify whether or not there were seasonal differences in reasons for reporting complaints and the frequency of complaints. Results showed that there were differences in frequency and type of complaint between the nonholiday shopping season and the holiday shopping season from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Our findings contribute to a topic on which there is a paucity of empirical research.