Complaining Ease, Complaint Satisfaction, Brand Image and Customer Loyalty.

Abstract

Complaints are generally made by customers who are dissatisfied by the firm offer. Complaints needs to be handled very carefully since few out of dissatisfied customers would actually complain, meanin& that when a firm receives a complaint there may be more out there with the same problem. Literature suggests that while certain amount of service failures are inevitable, proper service recovery can not only win back the customer but also convert him to a loyal customer. It has been identified that complex complaining process or customers perception about it is one major reason behind customer's not complaining. Thus the current study using a non­random sample of 371 respondents looks at the importance of complaint handing process on customer repurchase behaviour in Sri Lankan context. The study mainly investigates the impact of complaining ease on customer repurchase behaviour using complaint satisfaction and brand image as mediators. The analysis used structural equation modelling to estimate the model. The results reveal that when brand image & complaint satisfaction are used as predictors, brand image explains around 35% variation, while complaint satisfaction explains around 36% variation in the dependent variable, attitudinal loyalty. When the same predictors were used to explain behavioural loyalty it is observed that while brand image explains around 48% and complaint satisfaction explains around 22%. Further the results reveals that both brand image and complaint satisfaction mediates the relationship between ease of complaining and attitudinal loyalty. However when examining Brand image, it reveals that even though it works as a statistically significant mediator between ease of complaining and behavioural loyalty, complaint satisfaction does not register a statistically significant mediator effect when tested between the same variables.