The Effect of (IN) Congruence Between General Self-Confidence and Specific-Confidence on Intentions to Complain

Abstract

Complaint behavior is triggered by a customer’s level of dissatisfaction with a product, service and/or consumption episode and leads to a range of behavioral and non-behavioral responses involving the communication of negative perceptions (Day, 1984; Singh and Howell, 1985; Rogers and Williams, 1990; Volkov, et al., 2002). Over the years, extensive research has been conducted and several individual, product and situation-specific factors have been examined as determinants of complaint behavior and type of consumers’ responses. The type of consumer response is of utmost importance to companies as responses other than voice (i.e., complaining to the company) could be more damaging to a brand and a firm’s reputation. Given that voice response is the preferred response style (e.g. see Singh, 1990), this study examines the nature and role of consumers’ general and specific confidence and assesses their impact on voice response. The rationale is that “at the heart of market exchanges lies a question of confidence” (Martinez and Santiso, 2003, p. 363) and consumer confidence is likely to hold explanatory power to both complaining behavior and choice of response style.