Gendering the voiced complaining behavior of customers in small restaurant environments: A case of college students in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

Understanding gender-related nuances connected to customer complaining behavior in a valuable market segment in a low-income economy is strategically important to customer relationship management practitioners in the hospitality industry. Using customer complaining behavior taxonomies and Eagly’s social role theory, this quantitative study examines how selected demographic variables, attitude toward complaining, customer loyalty, and likelihood of success affect the verbal complaining behavior of a sample of college students in Zimbabwe in restaurants contexts. The findings revealed that all the proposed predictors had statistically significant effects on voiced complaining. In addition, the gender variable moderated the influence of the non-demographic predictors. Interestingly, the likelihood of success variable had a negative influence on the respondents’ propensity to complain verbally. Based on this evidence, it is concluded that gender is integral to how college students react to service failure in restaurant environments. Consequently, marketers of related services should implement customized gender-sensitive customer complaint handling and service recovery strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitude
• loyalty
• gender
• voiced complaining
• students
• restaurants

Acknowledgments

The researcher acknowledges the respondents who took part in the study.

Declaration of interest statement

The researcher has no conflict of interest to declare.