Celso Augusto de Matos

Consumer reaction to service failure and recovery: the moderating role of attitude toward complaining

Purpose – The paper seeks to investigate, in a context of service failure and recovery, how consumer satisfaction is affected by problem severity and company responsiveness, how satisfaction influences repatronage intentions, word‐of‐mouth, and complaint intentions, and how consumer attitude toward complaining (ATC) moderates these relationships.Design/methodology/approach – An integrated model is proposed, following recent developments in the service recovery literature. This model is tested using data from a survey with 204 complaining customers.Findings – Service recovery affected satisfaction more strongly for consumers with high ATC, indicating a moderating role of ATC. This moderator was also supported in the link between satisfaction and complaining intentions. Also, failure severity and perceived justice influenced satisfaction, which affected repurchase intentions, word‐of‐mouth, and complaining intentions.Practical implications – Service managers should consider the differences between customers...

The different roles of switching costs on the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test the antecedent, mediating and moderating role of switching costs on the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty.Design/methodology/approach – Competing models are proposed based on previous studies investigating the influence of switching costs on satisfaction and loyalty. A survey was conducted with 7,461 customers of a large Brazilian bank. The four competing models were tested using structural equation modeling technique.Findings – The analysis revealed that: switching cost is a significant antecedent of both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty; the mediating effect of switching cost is stronger in the relationship between satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty; and the moderating effect of switching cost is stronger in the relationship between satisfaction and behavioral loyalty.Practical implications – This study emphasizes the relevance of the switching cost construct in the banking industry. Customers with different switching...

Consumer Reaction to Product Recalls: Factors Influencing Product Judgement and Behavioural Intentions

In order to evaluate the factors influencing consumers’ responses to product recalls, two surveys were conducted among Brazilian automobile owners and two regression models tested. Results indicated that (i) product judgement was significantly affected by corporate social responsibility (CSR), blame attributed to the company and whether or not consumers had a car made by the brand considered; and (ii) behavioural intentions were significantly affected by CSR, consumers’ involvement with the message, perceived danger, product judgement and whether or not consumers had a car made by the brand considered. Findings revealed, however, that CSR is a better predictor of the product judgement than of the behavioural intentions, in accordance with recent studies indicating that CSR affects consumer judgements and behaviour differently. Finally, these two models are discussed and compared with previous research.

Customer reactions to service failure and recovery in the banking industry: the influence of switching costs

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to test the effects of satisfaction, satisfaction with service recovery (SSR) and switching costs (SC) on loyalty and positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) of bank customers in a service recovery context, taking into account the interaction among latent variables and the effects of contextual factors. Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical model is proposed based on previous studies and tested using structural equation modeling technique and bootstrapping estimates. A survey was conducted with 1,878 bank customers of a large Brazilian bank. Findings – Results supported the positive effects of satisfaction and SC on loyalty, while PWOM was influenced mainly by SAT. In addition, SC significantly interacted with satisfaction, reducing the effects of satisfaction on loyalty. Finally, relationship time, gender and age were the most relevant contextual factors. Practical implications – This study highlights the importance of switching costs in the banking industry. Although s...

A cross-cultural investigation of customer reactions to service failure and recovery

ABSTRACT Despite recent investigations into cross-cultural analyses of service failure and recovery, there has been little empirical research on the influence of customers’ cultural orientation. This study analyzes a survey of 463 consumers from Brazil, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Results showed that perceived justice has a significant effect on customer satisfaction, which in turn affects repurchase, word of mouth, and the intention to complain. More specifically, the effect of procedural justice on satisfaction with service recovery was moderated by uncertainty avoidance orientation, and the effect of recovery satisfaction on the intention to complain to third parties was moderated by power distance orientation.

The influence of personal values and demographic variables on customer loyalty in the banking industry

Purpose – Even though personal values are considered an important variable in consumer studies, rarely has it been related to customer loyalty, especially in the banking context and considering the different loyalty phases. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of personal values on loyalty phases in the private banking industry, taking into account the moderating influence of demographic variables. Design/methodology/approach – After developing a theoretical framework based on the relevant literature, a research model is proposed and empirically tested with data from a survey with 891 bank customers from Brazil. Hypotheses of moderation were tested using structural equation modelling technique. Findings – Results suggested that customers that place more importance on growth and achievement as personal values are less loyal to their bank, considering all four stages of loyalty. Moreover, this effect was more pronounced for female, older and high-income consumers, supporting the ...

Behavioural responses to service encounter involving failure and recovery: the influence of contextual factors

This study investigates two features of customer satisfaction within the context of service failure and recovery: (i) the effect of perceived justice on customer satisfaction and (ii) the effect of customer satisfaction on repurchase intentions, negative word-of-mouth, and intention to complain. The study takes into account the influence of important contextual factors, including severity of failure, recovery responsiveness, attitude toward complaining, switching cost, and the relationship level. Based on a survey of 556 customers with complaints in Brazil, the results supported the influence of perceived justice on satisfaction and of satisfaction on behavioural responses. Specifically, findings revealed that perceived failure severity, attitude toward complaining, and switching costs were the more relevant contextual factors, as these were significantly associated with satisfaction, intention to complain, and negative word-of-mouth.

Uma generalização empírica sobre comunicação boca a boca usando metanálise

Based on a literature review of word-of-mouth communication, a theoretical framework is proposed and tested, in which word-of-mouth (WOM) is considered the main construct, satisfaction and loyalty are the antecedents and WOM valence (i.e., positive, negative and mixed) is the moderator. This theoretical model is tested using data obtained from a meta-analysis. After reviewing 664 studies, a total of 90 are submitted to the analyses, since they have the relationships of interest and the required statistics (i.e., correlations between constructs or statistics for group differences). The analyzed subset of studies produced 119 independent samples and 36,673 respondents. The results showed a significant association of satisfaction and loyalty with WOM. More specifically, WOM valence introduced a significant moderating effect. This moderating effect is proposed in this paper as the following empirical generalization: considering satisfaction and loyalty as correlates of WOM, satisfaction is the variable that has a stronger relationship with positive WOM, while loyalty is the one that is more closely associated with negative WOM, which might be expressed as SAT→WOM(+), LEA→WOM(-).

How to deal with negative publicity: the importance of consumer involvement

Negative information about companies can have a harmful effect on consumer perceptions. However, few studies investigate how consumers process negative publicity and how companies should react to it. In order to examine this question, two experiments were carried out: first, a laboratory experiment which tests how consumers process two different types of negative publicity (product attributes or company values); second, a field experiment comparing three different responses (no answer, denial/reduction of offensiveness and corrective action) given by the company affected by the negative publicity. Results from the first study confirm the detrimental effect of negative publicity on consumer attitudes, indicate that consumers have a higher level of involvement with the message when it is concerned with the companys values and suggest a moderating role of the product involvement on the influence of negative information on corporate image. The second study extends these findings by identifying different options for company reactions from literature and testing them empirically. Results suggest again the involvement variable as a moderator, now on the influence of company reaction on product image

Estetização do Marketing

descreve o pesadelo de viver numa ditadura tecnologicamente aparelhada. O monitoramento do cotidiano e feito por câmeras de televisao. Praticamente nao ha lugar livre de vigilância constante, o que trans -forma atos banais, como escrever um diario, em comportamentos suspeitos. O que nao e visto eletronicamente e controlado pelos cidadaos, adestrados para identificar subversi-vos e entrega-los a policia. No livro, a tecnologia tambem e usada para mudar a percepcao que os cidadaos tem da realidade, mantendo-os convencidos de que o presente e melhor do que o passado, apesar da saude precaria, frio e continuas quedas nas racoes de comida.