THE EFFECT OF SERVICE QUALITY AND EXPECTATIONS ON CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS

Author: FORBES, SILKE J.

Source: Journal of Industrial Economics, Volume 56, Number 1, March 2008 , pp. 190-213(24)

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Abstract:

Customer complaints measure consumers' dissatisfaction with the quality of a product or service. If product quality is unobservable ex ante, customer complaints may be driven by expectations as well as by the actually experienced quality level. I test whether the level of quality that could be expected prior to consumption affects the number of customer complaints after controlling for-ex post observable-actual quality, using data from the U.S. airline industry. I find that there are fewer complaints when actual quality is higher. Controlling for actual quality, a higher level of expected quality leads to more complaints.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6451.2008.00338.x

Affiliations: 1: Department of Economics, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, 0508, La Jolla, California, 92093-0508, U.S.A.:, Email: sjanuszewski@ucsd.edu

Publication date: 2008-03-01