Exploring the Role of Negative Emotions on Customer’s Intention to Complain

Abstract

Negative emotions are the most displayed set of emotions experienced during service failure and when dealt carefully improves customer retention attitude with the organization. Anger (anger, frustration and irritation), Unhappiness (unhappiness, worry and nervousness) and Sadness (sadness, helplessness and depression) were identified as major sets of negative emotions through multidimensional scaling techniques. The proposed model is established on the basis of identified categories and its effect is examined for customer complaining intention followed by relationship strength. Results of structural equation modelling (SEM) indicate positive significant effect for unhappiness and anger on relationship strength when mediated by customer complaining intention. Category of sadness indicates negative influence explaining the weak relationship strength. However, such weak effect is diluted when it is examined in the presence of complaining intention. Analysis contributes in providing explanation for the importance of complaining intention that dilutes negative emotional effect among customers. Managerial implication of the study emphasizes for positive approach that motivates customers to complain when they experience negative emotions so as to facilitate the smooth flow of communication and increase customer retention intention.