An asymmetric configural model approach for understanding complainer emotions and loyalty

Few works emphasize the emotional nature of customer complaint behavior, and those that do so focus largely on negativity. The idea that specific emotions might lead to idiosyncratic reactions and that in some cases positive emotions may also be aroused during the complaint experience has been largely neglected. The study explores this issue by identifying specific emotions experienced by complainers and then relating them to resulting complainer loyalty levels, separately under conditions where the outcomes of the complaint process is evaluated favorably versus unfavorably. Complaint texts posted on a well-known website are content analyzed and six types of emotions (hopeful, puzzled, recessive, befooled, offended, and hypersensitive), three types of texting styles (general, specific, and threatening), and five types of complainer concerns (financial, technical, psychological, social, and physical) are identified via content analyses. Configural analyses reveal 33 combination paths of these antecedent conditions for complainer loyalty and 65 different combinations for disloyalty. Results suggest that the specific emotions approach potentially explains more about complaining customer behavior compared to the more general valence-based approach, and that post-complaint loyalty depends considerably on complainer emotions, concerns, and texting styles experienced and expressed during the complaint process.