The influence of payer vs partial payers on customers' complaint intentions: The mediating role of embarrassment avoidance

摘要

The purposes of this article are to examine the effect of payer vs. partial payers on consumer complaint behavior when encountering service failure and the mediating role of consumers' embarrassment avoidance in the relationship between payer vs. partial payers and complaint intentions. The results demonstrate that paying customers behave higher complaint intentions when they are alone than when in groups under a service failure condition. In addition, customers encountering service failures are more likely to have voice complaints when they are payers than when they are partial payers (either splitting the group check equally or going Dutch). More importantly, the findings of our study support the view that embarrassment avoidance partially mediates the effect of payer vs. partial payers and customers' complaint intentions.