The impacts of complaint efforts on customer satisfaction and loyalty

ABSTRACT

This study identifies the depth structure of customer complaint efforts and investigates the roles of each dimension in the structural relations with customer satisfaction and loyalty. Three dimensions of customer complaint efforts were identified, procedural effort, cognitive effort, and affective effort in the restaurant context. This study uses two subsamples to develop and validate the proposed three-dimension customer complaint efforts scale. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the first subsample of 211 participants. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were applied on the second subsample of 328 participants. It is found that customers’ physical/procedural and cognitive efforts exerted during the complaint resolution process compound their affective efforts, which further reduce customer satisfaction with the complaint process and erode customer behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. This study bridges the research gap gaps and provides managerial implications to help reduce customer complaint efforts and ensure positive customer behaviors.

摘要

本文鉴别了顾客投诉精力的深层结构，研究了顾客投诉的不同维度和每个维度在与满意度和忠诚度的结构关系中的作用。本文识别了顾客投诉的三个维度，程序性精力，感知性精力和情感性精力。本文采用了2个子样本展开并验证了本文所提出的顾客抱怨精力三维度的结构量表。本文对有211个样本的第一个子 样本采用探索因子分析法，对有328个样本的第二个子 样本采用验证性因子分析法和结构方程模型。研究发现，在投诉解决过程中，顾客的程序性精力和感知性精力加剧了他们的情感性精力， 情感性精力进一步降低顾客对企业解决投诉过程的满意度，削弱了顾客的行为忠诚度和态度忠诚度。本文填补了前文研究的缺口， 并给管理者提供了关于减少顾客投诉精力，从而确保积极的顾客行为上的管理意义。

KEYWORDS:

• Customer complaint efforts
• physical/procedural efforts
• cognitive efforts
• affective efforts
• customer satisfaction
• customer loyalty

关键词:

• 顾客投诉精力; 程序性精力; 感知性精力; 情感性精力; 顾客满意度; 顾客忠诚度

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Ruiying Cai http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4152-2254