Why customer dissatisfied

To measure the reference constructs perceived effort, perceived justice, customer satisfaction, commitment, loyalty and word-of-mouth a questionnaire was completed by a sample selection of mobile phone users.

To determine the content and the final structure of the questionnaire it was necessary to adapt previously validated, contrasted scales, to approach the reality under analysis. This study was conducted in the mobile telephone sector in Spain, as it is currently highly competitive and dynamic. Appendix I shows the measurement scales used in this analysis and the references used to develop initially.

To do this, we performed a pre-test with students of different subjects all fourth grade and specialty of Marketing Bachelor of Business Administration. In addition, also resorted to the opinion of several experts Marketing scholars investigated the issue from three universities and national and international.

They are all service users, cellular phones, in this case, and therefore have a high level of familiarity with it. Finally, the profile of the person who conducted the pre-test was representative of the population. Recent work has recognized the complexity of analyzing service recovery processes because only a minority of dissatisfied customers processed a grievance Michel and Meuter, For this reason, was subcontracted to a company specialized field work.

Respondents had to be older people who have experienced first trouble with your mobile phone operator and, after placing a formal complaint, had received a response from the company. The technical data of the study are shown in Table 1. This methodology has recently been advocated and used in the marketing literature Chung, ; Jayawardhena et al.

Perceived effort variables, satisfaction, commitment, loyalty and word-of-mouth have been considered first-order constructs. The literature suggests sometimes that loyalty and engagement are considered multidimensional constructs. However, to adapt the questionnaires to the reality under study, the pre-test the approach recommended is shown in Appendix I.

To work with the variable of perceived justice has been necessary to develop a hierarchical component analysis, as this variable represents a second-order formative construct where each of its dimensions are constructs of the first order.

With the objective of evaluating the quality of the data obtained, an individual reliability analysis of each item relative to its construct was carried out. The results show that all the values exceed the threshold required by Carmines and Zeller The same applies when assessing the reliability of the variables using Cronbach's Alpha and composite reliability. We can confirm that all constructs are reliable and exceed the reference value Appendix 1.

In order to analyze the convergent validity we used the average variance extracted AVE , which according to Fornell and Lacker , must exceed the value of 0. Notably, the AVE is a measure that can only be calculated for reflective variables so post-service recovery perceived justice has been considered varying its average variance extracted will not take any value.

Also, the discriminate validity was confirmed by performing a comparison of the AVE of each construct diagonal and correlations between variables. Finally, an analysis was performed to measure the variable multicollinearity formative perceived justice. When variables are reflective this type of analysis does not make sense because what matters is that the indicators that measure the variable are highly correlated with each other. The variable perceived justice, in this study, is formed by three indicators: distributive justice and procedural interactive.

Each of these indicators reflects a different aspect of the concept of justice so it is not necessary the presence of multicollinearity, i. The IVF we got with the dependent variable: procedural justice was 2. So once you have shown no correlation between indicators measuring perceived justice variable, we can say that the best way to measure this construct is considering training. This section presents the estimation results of the proposed model to test whether the service recovery process determines the level of post-service recovery customer satisfaction and if this, in turn, determines a higher propensity to communicate positive information about the company and its products word-of-mouth.

To confirm the significance of the variables we proceeded to calculate the path coefficients for the contribution of the predictor variables to the endogenous variables using for this SmartPLS, our analysis also supports t values of the parameters obtained using this technique for Bootstrap, for confirming the accuracy and stability of the estimates.

Table 2 shows the significance of structural paths, the value of the explained variance and the acceptance or rejection of the hypotheses. Not significant. With regard to the antecedents of satisfaction with the service recovery process, we proposed a positive relationship between effort and perceived justice and customer satisfaction with service recovery Hypothesis 1 and 3 respectively.

That is, both history and justice-perceived effort-influencing customer satisfaction with service recovery significantly. However, these two antecedents of satisfaction are not the same level Hypothesis 2. However, despite getting a positive coefficient in line with the prediction made, the data indicate that the effect of loyalty H8 on the word-of-mouth is not statistically significant. Finally, to increase the rigor of the analysis and demonstrate the validity of the proposed model to understand the process by which an initially dissatisfied customer can become a prescriber of the company, the proposed model is contrasted with the alternative model.

In particular, and following some theoretical propositions related to the aforementioned theory of reciprocity Bagozzi, , could also be argued that, regardless of customer satisfaction with service recovery by the company, if customers perceive that the company strives and tries to be fair in its resolution of the problem, the customer may experience some predisposition to disseminate information or opinions favorable to their immediate environment.

This may result in the existence of direct effects of perceived justice and customer effort on their willingness to issue a word-of-mouth company's positive. Once submitted the rival model to empirically estimate the statistical packages SPSS and PLS, the results indicate that the direct effects between effort and perceived justice and word-of-mouth, but have a positive value, not significant from the point of statistically Table 3.

This result reveals that the company strives to offer a fair and not enough for customers to have a positive disposition to speak well of the organization. The end result of the process, the word-of-mouth, is mediated by satisfaction with service recovery, showing the superiority of the proposed model.

Also in this research has considered the magnitude of the service failure as a control variable. These results show that the greater the severity of the service failure the company may have more difficulties to satisfy the customer, even if the relationship turns out to be insignificant. Our main research objective is to analyze the possibility of turning initially dissatisfied customers into evangelists of the firm, or prescribers—i.

To this end, the study proposes a conceptual model—rooted in proven theories—which has been empirically tested in the context of mobile telecommunications. The results allow us to offer a number of theoretical contributions and recommendations for business practice which are discussed in the following section. First, it has been demonstrated that if customers perceive that the company strives to solve the problem occurred and offers a fair, the level of satisfaction with the service recovery process will increase significantly.

In turn, these two are not the same background level. Perceived effort in a significantly positive influence on the perceived justice of customers, so that the role of the employees of the organization will be essential that when consumers evaluate their treatment or management of the complaint made by the company. We also demonstrate that satisfaction with the service recovery process is a critical variable in the field of relationship marketing that will determine the degree of loyalty, commitment, and word-of-mouth.

Therefore, this study contributes to this line of research highlighting the important role post-service recovery customer satisfaction plays in creating long-term customer-company relationships. Specifically, once there has been an unsatisfactory situation service failure , properly solve this problem leads customers to show, in return for the investment made by the company-a set of attitudes and behaviors that result in a greater fidelity, engagement and willingness to communicate a word-of-mouth positive.

Thus demonstrate research proposals launched by Kumar et al. Based on these behaviors, the positive relationship between satisfaction and word-of-mouth is a very outstanding result. This relationship was not confirmed in all investigations carried out so far Anderson, ; Kim and Smith, , but the results obtained in our study provide empirical evidence that allows us to understand the patterns of consumer behavior in today's mobile sector context.

So, following effective management of the problem by the company, allowing customers to recover their satisfaction, the organization can convert initially dissatisfied customers into prescribers of the organization. Moreover, besides the level of satisfaction, greater customer engagement they will also have a greater predisposition to spread favorable views of the company.

However, the results do not support the hypothesis that links loyalty and word-of-mouth customers. This result may be because in the current mobile phone industry, which increasingly includes a greater number of complaints, consumer loyalty is spurious Dick and Basu, Such loyalty is more behavioral than attitudinal, i.

Another possible explanation for this result may be found in the need to include some mediator variable between these variables. Sweeney and Swait measured the relationship between loyalty and word-of-mouth customer including the indirect effect the credibility of the brand. In this case, results for the structural model are not significant. Finally, the results obtained demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model compared to an alternative model that considers the direct effects between the background model perceived effort and justice and positive word-of-mouth.

This result sheds light on the importance of satisfaction as a key mediating variable to get those positive comments from customers. In this sense, the mere fact that the company shows an interest and strives to resolve service-related problems and provide a fair solution, is not enough for customers. Customer satisfaction, therefore, should be the main objective for companies and to get it is the only option to retain and to attract new customers in the future.

The context in which this paper has been developed also may help to understand the results. The mobile telephone sector in Spain reports a growing number of complaints each year so we are dealing with a set of particularly sensitive, demanding consumers. Achieving loyalty, therefore, is no simple task. Even when customers are loyal according to the scale used in this work that reflects the intentions to continue working with the company in the future , they are usually from the behavioral point of view, but not attitudinal.

This is due to the existence of high switching costs in the sector Polo and Sese, , which often represent an insurmountable barrier to change companies. According to Dick and Basu there are four types of loyalty: true loyalty, latent loyalty, spurious loyalty and zero loyalty. In this work, customer loyalty could be considered spurious loyalty that has a high degree of intent to repurchase, but a low degree of positive attitude toward the company.

So, not being a loyalty based on affective and attitudinal issues, does not result in a predisposition to speak favorably of the company word-of-mouth positive.

Word-of-mouth would take place otherwise, since this behavior is based on attitudinal rather than calculative factors Verhoef et al. This paper contributes to the literature by helping to clarify the significance of the association between post-service recovery customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth. Unlike work by authors like Kim and Smith and Carpenter —who find no significant correlation between these variables—our results show that initially dissatisfied customers can become prescribers; as long as they are satisfied with service recovery in terms of perceived effort and perceived justice.

In this sense, our study highlights the importance of perceived effort and justice as antecedents to post-service recovery customer satisfaction, and confirms that neither variable, by itself, is enough to have a direct impact on word-of-mouth. In addition, this study shows the clear impact perceived effort has on perceived justice and customer satisfaction.

This result allows us to deduce that customers will value that employees are involved in their problems, working every day to resolve their complaints and informing them of the exact state of the service recovery process. Considering the consequences of the model, the results obtained allow us to argue that customer loyalty and willingness—not only to engage but also to become a prescriber—increase in correlation with customer satisfaction. Hence, the basic premises of Relationship Marketing are met in contexts which are initially defined by dissatisfaction, as understood through the lens of Reciprocity Theory.

Organizations, therefore, should do everything in their power to avoid that customers spread negative opinions among their social circles as a result of poor service recovery management.

These cases lead to the deterioration of the customer-company relationship, the search for new alternatives and negative word-of-mouth. To prevent this, it is essential that firms resolve service failures in ways which customers deem satisfactory.

In this sense, becoming familiar with customer needs and preferences, in a personalized way—i. Of the three dimensions of perceived justice, consumers place most importance on distributive justice—based on compensation—and procedural justice, or how the complaint is managed.

Hence, customers will feel more indebted to firms which respond quickly, manage their complaint effectively, reimburse them with the exact amount of the bill in question, and repair or replace faulty products in a timely fashion; yet the same customers will appreciate when employees are nice, apologetic and know how to empathize with them.

The impact of perceived effort on perceived justice and satisfaction, then, is owing to the fact that customers value employee efforts to resolve their problems and keep them informed throughout the service recovery process.

For these strategies to be successful, therefore, companies must invest in staff training, as employee attitude and professionalism will be essential to achieving customer satisfaction; firms must emphasize the importance of being patient, engaging with customers and addressing complaints effectively. All efforts will be rewarded a posteriori: as Reciprocity Theory establishes, once service recovery has been achieved, satisfied customers will become prescribers who will contribute toward generating positive attitudes toward the company which, in turn, will enhance brand image and reputation, and help to attract new customers.

Despite being a clear contribution to the existing literature, our study presents a number of limitations. As we have limited our analysis to the mobile phone industry, for instance, extrapolating findings to other sectors should be done with care—and only after having analyzed potential structural similarities and differences between the two contexts. Similarly, one should be cautious when interpreting findings relating to the correlation between post-service recovery customer satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth; while our study confirms the significance of this relationship, this may not be the case with other papers perhaps due to the sector analyzed.

Furthermore, the questionnaires collected from a selection of mobile phone customers reflect personal perceptions and opinions, so it is possible that there may be some bias in their response. Finally, the data refer to a specific point in time and do not provide information regarding the duration of the customer-company relationship nor the type of complaint made.

In future studies, it would be worthwhile to conduct a longitudinal analysis of the entire service recovery process—from the moment of service failure to the resolution of the problem. It would also be interesting to gather data for variables which can have an impact on customer loyalty—such as the duration of the relationship and type of service failure.

In line with Verhoef and others who argue that demographic variables contribute significantly to customer-centered research and hold valuable lessons for business management, it would be relevant to consider customer profile variables—e. It would also be interesting to replicate the study in another sector, making a distinction between behavioral and attitudinal engagement; and to do the same with the loyalty variable.

In such a context—and taking into account the existing literature—customer engagement, or attitudinal loyalty, could have a significant impact on word-of-mouth.

PROJ2: The company was flexible when dealing with my problem. INTJ2: The company communicated with me appropriately. Note : Outer-weights values have been calculated for the formative variable perceived justice.. NA, not available: as perceived justice indicators are considered to be formative the AVE cannot be calculated, as it only takes values for reflective constructs Fornell and Lacker, By non-transactional behaviors we mean a readiness to spread favorable views of the company and its products positive word-of-mouth , participate in collaborative product design and development, share comments and opinions on websites and social networks, and maintain an ongoing dialog with the company through different commercial channels Kumar et al.

We focus on positive word-of-mouth in this study—that is, that which spreads favorable information about the company and its products and serves to recommend them within a social network. We make a distinction, therefore, between positive and negative world-of-mouth Holloway et al. This sector was chosen due to the considerable increase in number of complaints registered each year Instituto Nacional de Consumo, ; another factor driving this choice is the fact that the mobile sector has experienced a stable growth rate of 5.

This degree of saturation, coupled with a wide range of carrier options, has prompted companies to compete for market position via aggressive marketing and retention campaigns and strategies Maicas and Sese, ; Polo and Sese, —explaining the inherent interest in delving deeper in this area..

ISSN: Previous article Next article. Issue 3. Pages July - September More article options. From dissatisfied customers to evangelists of the firm: A study of the Spanish mobile service sector.

Download PDF. Corresponding author. This item has received. Under a Creative Commons license. Article information. Show more Show less. Finally, the main implications for marketing practice are discussed. Dissatisfied customers. JEL classification:. Full Text. Conceptual model. Table 1. Technical data. Population Legal adults who had experienced a service failure affecting their relationship with their mobile phone company and who—on making a formal complaint—received a response from their mobile service provider.

Geographical scope National Spain Sample survey participants Demographic characteristics Gender: men: 93 Age: 18—35 years of age: Table 2. Results for the Structural Model. Alternative model. Table 3. Results for the alternative model. Appendix 1. NA not available : as perceived justice indicators are considered to be formative the AVE cannot be calculated, as it only takes values for reflective constructs Fornell and Lacker, Note : Outer-weights values have been calculated for the formative variable perceived justice.

Appendix II. Ambrose, R. Hess, S. The relationship between justice and attitudes: an examination of justice effects on event and system-related attitudes. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, , pp. Anderson, B. The use of pledges to build and sustain commitment in distribution channels.

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Bauer, M. Grether, M. Building customer relations over the Internet. Industrial Marketing Management, 31 , pp. Relationship marketing of services-growing interest, emerging perspectives. Bitner, B. Booms, M. The service encounter: diagnosing favourable and unfavourable incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54 , pp. The effects of perceived justice on complainants?? A dynamic model of the duration of customer's relationship with a continuous service provider: the role of satisfaction.

Marketing Science, 17 , pp. Word-of-mouth effects on short-term and long-term product judgments. Journal of Business Research, 32 , pp. Verhoef, A. Customer intimacy and commitment to relationships with firms in five different sectors: preliminary evidence.

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 18 , pp. Cambra-Fierro, J. Berbel-Pineda, R. Carmines, R. Consumer shopping value, satisfaction and loyalty in discount retailing. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Research, 15 , pp. Explaining consumer complaining behaviour in double deviation scenarios: the banking services. The Services Industries Journal, 29 , pp. Cater, B. Product and relationship quality influence on customer commitment and loyalty in B2B manufacturing relationships.

Industrial Marketing Management, 39 , pp. Chang, H. Does service recovery affect satisfaction and customer loyalty? An empirical study of airline services. When the quality of your product or service falls below the expectations of your customers, they will have several reservations about it.

Therefore, leaving a bad review on the store's website. If customers feel that your product or service is overpriced; especially in comparison with the quality they get, they may give negative feedback about your product. You'd deal with a great amount of customer dissatisfaction if you cannot justify the pricing of your product or service. Pricing and quality are very important factors that affect consumer choices and when customers are paying more for a product, they expect more quality and value.

Before fixing the price of your product, you should conduct a pricing survey to sample the opinion of your target market. Organizations usually list product specifications and descriptions to give customers an idea of what to expect when they make a purchase. If the product fails to conform to this description and specification, it can cause customer dissatisfaction as your customers would see this as a breach of trust. For instance, a Fruit Juice company says that a carton of juice contains 12 juice packs.

However, after purchasing the product, a customer finds out that there are only 10 juice packs in the carton. This is a breach of trust and the customer will not like this. Poor product usability can also cause customer dissatisfaction as customers will not have positive feedback for products that are not user-friendly.

For instance, if a customer finds it difficult to navigate your organization's website and find the information he needs, he will get frustrated and abandon the website. If a customer reaches out to your brand for help with an issue and fails to get the response he or expects, the customer will be dissatisfied with your organization.

If your customer service representatives are rude, uncouth, and without empathy, they will create a negative impression of your organization. Customers like it when you are real with them and you provide all the information that they need beforehand. For instance, if you want customers to pay delivery fees separately from product costs and you do not inform them beforehand, it can cause customer dissatisfaction. Customer dissatisfaction has far-reaching effects on your business because customers will not patronize brands that they do not trust.

More than affecting your sales and revenue, customer dissatisfaction can also lead to poor brand reputation which has a long-term impact on your brand.

Here, we will discuss a few effects of customer dissatisfaction on your business. Dissatisfied customers leave a ton of bad reviews which affects your overall brand perception. Customers are more likely to leave a review after a negative experience than a positive one. The same way customers become willing evangelists of your brand when they are pleased with your service delivery is exactly how they spread the word when they are dissatisfied.

It is not uncommon for customers to leave negative feedback on a brand's social media pages to communicate their displeasure. Dissatisfied customers can leave poor product ratings on Google or even go on a personal campaign to discourage people from buying from you. If a prospective customer has a negative experience with your product or service at any brand touchpoint, they may not be willing to go ahead with your product or service.

This means you'd have lost the chance to convert one more lead into a paying customer. Also, dissatisfied customers are less willing to tell other people about your product or service. This means that you'd miss out on one of the cheapest methods of building brand awareness and growing your customer base.

Usually, people are more convinced to patronize a brand when there is social proof of excellent customer service and experience. Customer dissatisfaction spreads like wildfire and dissatisfied customers are less likely to become repeat customers. Also, other customers who have not had a bad experience with your brand can stop buying your product or service because someone shared a negative experience he or she had with your brand online.

As more dissatisfied customers stop buying from you and discourage other people from buying your product, you'd record poor sales that can affect your revenue and profits.

Every time a customer purchases your product, he or she invests in your business and so, customer dissatisfaction is just a poor return on investment.

You may be wondering what customer satisfaction has to do with your employees. Well, the truth, no one wants to be associated with a brand that lacks customer loyalty; not even your employees.

Dealing with dissatisfied customers makes their jobs more difficult and eventually the working environment becomes toxic. More often than not, dissatisfied customers become unhappy customers. Customer dissatisfaction affects customer experience and leads to toxic relationships between your brand and the customers. Setting up effective customer feedback channels makes it easy for customers to reach out to your team when they encounter any problems.

Effective customer feedback channels in your organization also help you to stay on top of your customers' thoughts and expectations. An easy way to achieve this is to conduct different types of customer surveys regularly.

You may want a professional web designer to handle this for you. Another cause of customer dissatisfaction is not being true to your word. Ecommerce business is about integrity. Regardless of whether you make it explicit or not, your products and services come with a promise attached: that they will be delivered professionally, on time and at the price indicated.

Your customers may not say it to your face but that disappointment and feeling of being short-changed will lead to them walking out the door. You are essentially breaking your word in the eyes of the customer. One of the most important parts of your business is offering the highest quality possible of products and services. If customers find something wrong with what they are given, you should offer apology for it and resolve the issue with a refund or replacement as soon as possible.

Make it clear to customers what kind of quality they can expect from your offerings. If you fail to deliver, then you owe them. For physical products, you should describe what condition they will be in. For services, let customers know exactly what they will get for their money. Put their best interests before your business. What counts of course is what happens in the thousands of unobserved customer interactions that take place every day.

The default tone of anyone working in your company should be pleasant, helpful and courteous. This is something that needs to be rigorously watched — all it takes is one bad apple to lower the overall impression of an entire team.

Customers rightfully expect a base level of civility in any encounters with your company. Look, we all know sales is about persistence. Pushing too hard often times alienates customers who may be otherwise very happy with your services.

The tone you take is equally crucial, it needs to be in keeping with your overall offering. Making it as easy as possible for your customers to pay is essential for increasing conversions and sales. This is why your checkout page is critical. Consumers are looking for the best value. Value incorporates price, but it also includes benefits. If you are not able to match your competitors price, the best thing to do is to focus on value. Present your products to carry benefits over and above those of your competitor who is charging a lower price, you can justify the higher price.

In fact, lowering your price might hurt you by masking the value that you are providing your customers. Here are 12 Reasons Why Customers are Dissatisfied 1.