Customer Complaining: The Role of Tie Strength and Information Control

Abstract

We examine the impact of two key constructs, information control and tie strength, on consumers’ likelihood of complaining following service failures. We report convergent results from three types of studies — an experiment, a survey, and secondary data. In the first study, tie strength and information control were systematically varied in an experiment using a restaurant scenario. In a second study, survey data from patients who experienced dissatisfactory service was collected. The third study used field data from 1,470 customers of an HMO. Results from all three studies showed that, following service failure, complaining is more likely when the tendency for information control is stronger and ties are weaker.

Keywords: Customer complaint, Service quality, Customer loyalty, Tie strength, Customer satisfaction, Service recovery