From “Hypercritics” to “Happy Campers”: Who Complains the Most in Fine Dining Restaurants?

Khalilzadeh, Jalayer; Ghahramani, Ladan; Tabari, Saloomeh

doi:10.1080/19368623.2017.1256802

Cited by 19 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…This study contributes to the literature on customer complaint behaviours and complaint management, and crisis management theory. Firstly, the prior literature has focused on customer complaint behaviours mainly in hotels (Hu et al , 2019) and restaurants (Khalilzadeh et al , 2017) and subsequently provided insights into complaint management about related industries. This study goes beyond the previous literature by removing the restrictions on the objects of complaints while concentrating on the special context of customer complaint behaviours and solutions in response.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crisis information, communication strategies and customer complaint behaviours: the case of COVID-19

Liu

Chen

et al. 2021

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Purpose The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic plunged global tourism into a huge crisis in 2020. China was confronted with a wave of cancellations by tourism consumers due to COVID-19 and tourist complaints rose dramatically during this period. Although tourism enterprises have quickly introduced measures in response, the effectiveness of targeted policies is expected to be evaluated. Concerned about this phenomenon, this study aims to provide insights into the dim prospects of the tourism industry and to bridge the gap between tourists and enterprises. Design/methodology/approach The current study adopts a two-step method that combines automatic and manual content analysis to contrastively analyse 647 complaints from the Sina platform and the measures of five online travel agencies (OTAs) taken to deal with COVID-19. Findings The results reveal that the COVID-19-related information and policies issued by official departments had a promoting effect on tourist complaints. OTAs were the main target of complainers, and three themes of complaints were identified, namely, cancellation barriers, refund barriers and customer relationship management. Although tourism enterprises’ policies covered most dimensions of the three themes, more detailed and mutually beneficial policies need to be formulated in the face of a new round of cancellations. Originality/value This research attempts to investigate tourism customer complaint behaviours in the case of COVID-19 and to provide tourism enterprises receiving different complaints with practical insights into crisis management. It contributes to simultaneously minimizing business losses and maintaining customer relationships in the service industry, improving the industry’s performance under potential crises in the future.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crisis information, communication strategies and customer complaint behaviours: the case of COVID-19

Liu

Chen

et al. 2021

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“…Our results highlighted a number of issues with the current operationalization of EWOM in a restaurant context. We suspected that many current scales used for EWOM measurement were too general to impart meaningful information, such as: asking about posting “online” (Wu et al , 2019), on a “review site” (Hanks et al , 2016) or “other virtual pages” (Khalilzadeh et al , 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most obvious problems related to the measurement of EWOM is that many existing scales are so general as to be virtually meaningless in today’s richly complex internet environment. For example, Wu et al (2019) ask about the likelihood of posting a “negative online review.” Khalilzadeh et al (2017) ask subjects how likely they would be to comment on social networks and “other virtual pages.” Likewise, Line et al (2018) ask whether a guest would post feedback “online” while Antón et al (2019) ask subjects if they would be likely to post on “social networks and other websites.” Clearly, the vague nature of these questions/measurement items fails to take into account the complexity that represents the current ecosystem of social media, UGC and multi-channel marketing, thus limiting the usefulness of information gleaned from such scales. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to answer the question: what are contemporary assessments of EWOM actually measuring?…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A reconsideration of the EWOM construct in restaurant research: what are we really measuring?

Line¹,

Hanks²,

Doğru³

2020

IJCHM

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Purpose With the proliferation of internet-based communication channels, understanding how restaurant consumers engage in electronic word of mouth (EWOM) has become an important field of academic pursuit. However, while communication channels have become more numerous and complex, the methods used to operationalize the attendant EWOM behaviors on these channels have remained relatively simplistic. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to consider existing methods of measuring restaurant EWOM in terms of their face validity in the contemporary communications landscape. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a total of six independent surveys that use various combinations of sampling, methodological and analytical approaches to demonstrate, measurement, social media, methodology, user-generated content, EWOM, electronic word of mouth the multiple problems associated with the measurement of restaurant EWOM as a latent construct. Findings The results suggest that the current methods for measuring EWOM are indeed outdated, indicating the need for a more nuanced approach to the academic pursuit of EWOM behavior. Research limitations/implications The existing methods of measuring restaurant EWOM are found to be invalid for many reasons. These methods of measuring EWOM should be abandoned in favor of channel-specific operationalizations that control for previous behavior and respondents’ account access at a minimum. Originality/value As its inception, many studies have operationalized restaurant EWOM as an intention-based construct used to measure an individual’s likelihood to communicate information about hospitality experiences “online.” While such measures were no doubt valid in the early years of EWOM research, the research is the first to criticize the face validity of this approach in terms of its relevance in the contemporary communications environment.

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“…This might indicate that fine-dining restaurant customers could be more sensitive to service failures compared to those in a casual dining restaurant. Customers engage in relatively high expenditures and are likely to have higher service-quality expectations in fine-dining restaurants than other types of restaurants (Khalilzadeh et al, 2017;Kim and Boo, 2011). Therefore, compared to a casual dining context, customers may be more likely to become involved in voice complaining behavior regardless of the fellow customer's gender.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of fellow customer on complaining behaviors: the moderating role of gender

Joe

Choi

2019

IJCHM

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Purpose This paper aims to examine the joint effect of the focal customer’s gender and fellow customer’s gender in influencing voice complaint intentions and intention to convey negative word of mouth (NWOM). Design/methodology/approach Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two dining conditions (same-gender fellow customer vs opposite-gender fellow customer). Their intention to voice a complaint and to spread NWOM were measured after reading a scenario describing a service failure. A 2 (focal customer gender: male vs female) × 2 (fellow customer: same gender vs opposite gender) between-subjects quasi-experimental design was conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings The results demonstrate that female customers’ voice complaint intentions were significantly higher when a fellow customer’s gender was female rather than male. In contrast, regardless of the fellow customer’s gender, no significant differences in voice complaint intentions were found among male customers. The results further indicate that voice complaint intentions mediate the impact of a fellow customer’s gender on intention to spread NWOM among female customers. However, both female and male participants show equally high levels of voice complaint intentions in the context of fine-dining restaurant. Practical implications This study broadens the understanding of customer complaining behavior and also provides insights to practitioners on how to manage customers who are in same- and mixed-gender situations. Originality/value This research extends the literature on agency–communal theory and complaining behaviors by examining the role of a fellow customer’s gender influencing the focal customer’s intentions to voice complaints and to spread NWOM.

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From “Hypercritics” to “Happy Campers”: Who Complains the Most in Fine Dining Restaurants?

Cited by 19 publications

References 61 publications

Crisis information, communication strategies and customer complaint behaviours: the case of COVID-19

Crisis information, communication strategies and customer complaint behaviours: the case of COVID-19

A reconsideration of the EWOM construct in restaurant research: what are we really measuring?

The effect of fellow customer on complaining behaviors: the moderating role of gender

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