I beg your pardon? The effectiveness of deterrence tactics to reduce illegitimate complaining
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2022-06-29
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en
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Customers are increasingly deliberately fabricating problems, which are defined as ‘illegitimate customer complaints’ (Ro & Wong, 2012). These illegitimate complaints cause harm to firms, because the customers take advantage of firms’ service recovery policies (Baker et al., 2012). To justify this illegitimate behavior the customers use neutralization techniques, which are defined as justifications and excuses for deviant behavior (Kaptein & Helvoort, 2018). Given the increasing amount of illegitimate complaints, it is of importance to investigate how to deter this behavior. Hence, important practical insights can be gathered by investigating how to deter this illegitimate complaining behavior. Research into this subject is difficult because it is a sensitive subject and illegitimate complaining is illegal. Customers are reluctant to admit that they are engaging in such unethical and illegal behavior (Joosten, 2021). Nevertheless, four different types of illegitimate complainants were identified in previous research. Additionally, Dootson et al. (2018) have created a conceptual framework to better understand how deviant consumer behavior can be deterred. The purpose of this study was to contribute to earlier research and find ways in which the illegitimate complaining of the third type, the greedy customer type, can be deterred, using the deterrence theory of Dootson et al. (2018). Therefore, the following research question will be addressed: “How can organizations deter the illegitimate complaining of the greedy customer types, as described in the typology of Joosten (2021)?”. To answer the research question an online scenario-based, between-subjects experiment is executed. Findings show that the main proposition of Dootson et al. (2018) could not be accepted. No empirical evidence has been found in confirming that a match between the neutralization technique and the deterrence tactic would have most effect in increasing the cognitive dissonance and in decreasing the intention to complain. However, all five different deterrence tactics are effective in increasing the cognitive dissonance and decreasing the intention to complain. Furthermore, Joosten’s (2021) proposition that greedy customers use the neutralization techniques ‘claim of normalcy’ and ‘claim of entitlement’ the most, could be confirmed.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen