顾客抱怨真的会“人多势众”吗?品牌力量的调节作用

Are Customers Really More Likely to Complain,in,a Group?The Moderating Role of Brand Strength

顾客抱怨处理是营销管理中的热点问题,但已有文献缺乏对社会群体因素影响的研究。本文聚焦社会群体因素,研究群体服务失败对顾客抱怨行为产生的影响,比较与单独服务失败情景的差异。根据社会懈怠理论,与独自遭遇服务失败相比,群体中的顾客遭遇服务失败后,顾客感到抱怨与抱怨结果之间的联系减弱,感知抱怨有用性降低,从而弱化抱怨意向。本文包含两个研究:研究一检验了群体中顾客抱怨意向降低,发现顾客感知的抱怨有用性的中介作用;研究二验证了品牌力量调节群体情境对顾客抱怨意向的影响:对于弱品牌,与单独情境相比,群体情景降低了抱怨意向;对于强品牌,群体情景对于顾客抱怨的弱化作用不显著。

Customer complaint handling is an important element in service management for customer satisfaction and loyalty.Little attention has been paid to the influence of social contexts on customer complaining behavior.This paper examines the impact of social contexts(i.e.,the presence of a group vs.individual customer in a service failure)on customer complaining behavior.Built on the theory of social loafing effect,in this paper we propose that customers in a group believe that the outcome of a complaint depends on all customers'complaining efforts,and that individual customers'complaints are less useful.As a result,a customer is less likely to complain when the service failure occurs to a group than when it occurs to an individual customer himself or herself.We further propose that brand strength can moderate this effect.Specifically,this difference in complaining behavior between a group and an individual customer is much smaller when the brand has a strong positive impression among customers.Two experiments are conducted to test the predictions.The results of Study 1 demonstrate that participants have a lower intention to complain when they encounter the service failure in a group than when they are alone,and their perceived usefulness of complaining mediates the effect.The results of Study 2 show that for a weak brand,participants have a lower intention to complain when they are in a group than when they are alone.However,for a strong brand,this difference in complaining intention is not significant.