Service Failures and Consumer Responses: Exploring the Antecedents of Consumer Dissatisfaction and Propensity to Complain

This qualitative research synthesizes the literature of service failure and consumer complaining behavior and presents a holistic template of service failure and consumer responses. In reviewing the literature, seven propositions are made which include consumer personal factors, causal attributions, situational and organizational factors, service failure recovery perceptions, past relationship, and switching costs that influence the sequential relationship between service failure, consumer dissatisfaction and propensity to complain respectively. A qualitative methodology is employed to ratify the propositions using faceto face structured interviews from thirty individuals having different backgrounds. It was found that the type and intensity of service failure, social stratum, state and type of consumers’ emotions, beliefs, personality, attributions, perceptions of the organizational responsiveness, perceived service failure recovery mechanisms, past relationship with the brand/organization and switching costs affect consumer dissatisfaction and propensity to complain. Additional insights are also presented. Overall, this study comprehensively covers the serial responses to service failure, the underlying role of internal and external factors and integrates episodic processes of service failure and consumer complaint behavior in one model.