«Friendly» complaining behaviors: toward a relational approach

The relational approach is often presented as a strategy to retain customers, but can also be an appropriate approach to encourage consumers to complain, as a literature review shows it. Using information contained in complaints and giving right answers (distributive, procedural and interactional) to such complaints is essential. Relational marketing can also be used to orient consumers (but not all of them) to complain on certain products/services attributes. This article focuses on these issues and should stimulate further research in this new field.