The retail industry is faced with increased customer service demands and a competitive market
environment. For retailers to survive in a competitive marketplace, a customer orientation is vital
in order to establish and maintain long-term relationships with customers. As the clothing retail
industry is characterised as an industry with high human involvement, employee-related service
failures are inevitable. Service failures cause the disconfirmation of service expectations which
lead to customer dissatisfaction, a motivator of customer complaint behaviour.
Given that the resolution of a customer complaint is critical in order to restore customer
satisfaction, retailers are providing customers with a variety of innovative complaint channels,
such as online complaining. Although online complaint channels have become commonplace,
little research has been undertaken regarding the effect of a complaint channel on customers?
complaint behaviour and customers? expectations in the clothing retail industry. South African
clothing retailers could therefore benefit from an understanding of customers? online complaint
intention and ensuing service recovery expectations.
Scholars profess that complaint intention correlates positively with service recovery
expectations as customers decide to post a complaint when they generally have high recovery
expectations. Furthermore, complaint intention and service recovery expectations are increased
by a positive attitude towards complaining. Consequently, attitude towards complaining plays a
significant role in forecasting complaint behaviour of dissatisfied customers. Moreover, service
failure severity has been used to measure how customers assess the intensity of service
failures and is said to also influence customers? complaint intention and their subsequent
service recovery expectation.
The primary objective of this study was to uncover customers? online complaint intention and
subsequent service recovery expectations after experiencing an employee-related service
failure in the clothing retail industry. The empirical study was based on a descriptive research
design in which a structured, self-administered questionnaire was fielded amongst respondents
within the Johannesburg metropolitan area of South Africa. A non-probability, convenience
sampling method was used and a total of 400 respondents participated in this study.
The results indicate that although the majority of respondents use the Internet daily and exhibit
a high propensity to complain, they prefer to complain in-store. After respondents had been
presented with a fictional employee-related service failure scenario, they did not indicate a high
intention to complain online. Very few differences were uncovered between different groups of
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respondents pertaining to their attitude towards complaining, online complaint intention, service
failure severity perception and strength of service recovery expectation. Finally – with respect to
an empirically tested theoretical model – respondents? attitude towards complaining in general
and their perceptions of the severity of the service failure experienced, significantly and
positively influence their strength of service recovery expectations, while no significant positive
influences were uncovered for paths linking the aforementioned constructs with online complaint
intention. As a result, online complaint intention was omitted from the measurement model
seeing that respondents who participated in this study did not indicate a high tendency to
complain online.
It is recommended that clothing retailers recognise the importance of in-store complaint
management programmes and ensure that in-store complaint channels are easily accessible,
efficient and pleasant to use. Clothing retailers should actively educate customers regarding
alternative mechanisms and channels available for complaining. In order to increase customers?
online complaint intention, clothing retailers should provide a visible complaint portal on their
website and communicate the benefits of online complaining during in-store advertising.
Clothing retailers should furthermore provide the appropriate strength of service recovery for
particular levels of service failure severity when managing customer complaints. Consequently,
it is recommended that clothing retailers provide their employees with sufficient training that will
educate them regarding their interaction with customers and the best practice thereof, the
difference between minor and major service failures, and the selection of an appropriate service
recovery strategy during different service failure severity encounters.
It is recommended that this study is extended to other service settings in order to uncover online
complaint intention and strength of service recovery expectations of customers in other
industries. Finally, seeing that respondents? strength of service recovery expectations vary
according to the severity of the service failure, scenarios representing different levels of service
failure severity can be used as basis to measure the key constructs measured in this study.