The role of emotions in customer complaint behaviors

Purpose – Companies often find that customers fail to complain directly to the company when they experience a negative service incident. One explanation for such behavior may be found in customers' emotions caused by the incident. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how emotions and customer complaint behaviors are related. Design/methodology/approach – Two studies were performed. The first was a survey of customers who experienced negative service incidents in the Norwegian travel industry. In a second study, an experiment used another service context to validate the findings. Findings – The results indicated that negative service incidents that are wholly attributed to the company increase the likelihood of customers complaining directly to the company. However, negative service incidents for which customers attribute responsibility wholly or partly to themselves, customers will be more likely to complain anonymously through social media and blogs, and hence to be a source of negative word‐of‐mouth about the company. Originality/value – The paper establishes that increased levels of emotions, regardless of whether these emotions are internal or external in nature, increase customers complaints via negative word‐of‐mouth via social media and blogs.