The antecedents and consequences of politeness in a complaint handling setting

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UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES

SOLVAY BRUSSELS SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT

The antecedents and consequences of

politeness in a complaint handling

setting

Thesis presented for a PhD in Management Science by

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MEMBERS OF THE PHD JURY

Thesis Director

Dr. Sandra ROTHENBERGER, Professor of Marketing, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Internal Members

Dr. Laurence Rosier, Professor of Linguistics, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Dr. Olivier Witmeur, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles

External Members

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe it to my wife, my son and my parents that I have never – really – considered giving up. I certainly went through difficult times, when the challenges of combining full-time work, my familial duties and my PhD seemed to be insurmountable. This brings to mind a few lines from Al Pacino in one of his movies (Two for the Money):

“There’s no such thing as too far. You push everything as far as you can. You push, and you push, and you push until it starts pushing back. And then you push some goddamn more.”

The first lesson I learned from this PhD is that there is indeed “no such thing as too far.” Even if it involves waking up at 4 a.m. every day and working seven days a week for years, if one wants to reach a goal, one can. However, it can’t be done without the support of your family, and love played a major role in my success. Hence this special message to my beloved wife:

Grazie a te, Amore, per la tua pazienza e per il tuo supporto. Questo dottorato é anche il tuo, come é stato anche tuo l'MBA. Alla fine di questo precorso non so che dirti per farmi perdonare le ore di lavoro durante la notte. Mi rendo conto del tuo sacrificio durante gli ultimi sei anni e ti vorrei dire che ti amo.

I can’t thank Professor Laurence Rosier enough for her work and support. This thesis would never have come to fruition without her assistance and her generosity. Thank you for sharing all this knowledge with me. Ultimately, the advice you gave me, and the discussions we had, shaped the whole course of my research, and helped me discover the joys of linguistics. From colleagues … to friends. Life is great.

My thanks go also to my supervisor, Professor Sandra Rothenberger, who showed incredible patience when she “inherited” me after my first supervisor became unavailable. It was certainly not always easy, but eventually we made it. This PhD thesis is a shared success. Thank you for drawing my attention to the politeness conference in 2013, where I made invaluable connections, among others Professor Béatrice Fracchiolla, whose work on impoliteness inspired the 5th paper in this thesis.

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v the incentive that I was desperately looking for: in dark times I often thought that my research was worth nothing. Thank you for believing in me.

My thanks also go to Professor Moshe Davidow for “paving the way”. His work, especially his 2003 paper, was an incredible source of inspiration for me. This PhD thesis is a modest extension of his seminal work and an attempt to answer some of the important questions he raised more than 10 years ago. I’m so glad you came over from Israël to attend the defence.

The thesis was substantially improved after my private defence, through the suggestions of Professor Olivier Witmeur. Thank you for your important recommendations, which allowed me to emphasise more clearly the importance of complaint handling in the business landscape.

Allow me also to make a special mention of Professor David Silverman. I’ll never forget the seminar I followed in Brussels in June 2011, and the exchanges we had on what was at that time simply a research project. Thank you, David, for featuring my work in your latest book. As you can see from the frequent references to “naturally occurring data”, I’ve become one of your disciples, and your teaching has profoundly influenced me.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Following the call for further research on the organisational side of complaint handling, this research aims to explore actual firms’ complaint handling practices with a special focus on the role of politeness in firms-complaints interactions. This research is largely based on a dataset of naturally occurring exchanges obtained from the online public forum Les Arnaques – “The Scams” (www.lesarnaques.com). The setting is similar to a double-deviation scenario: the consumers had already complained once through the relevant company but were unsatisfied with the response. By lodging their complaint on the forum they seek mediation to obtain satisfaction in a second attempt.

As a first step, an enhanced conceptualisation of politeness in relation to the concept of complaint handling was proposed and tested. Sociolinguistics theories were used (Goffman’s theory of face, Grice’s maxims) and a quantitative analysis was conducted, to discover how the consumer’s perception of a firm’s politeness is influenced. This conceptualisation, new for the marketing literature, led to proposing a more accurate framework to assess the politeness-related practices of firms when handling complaints.

In a second step, this new conceptualisation of politeness was integrated within a larger framework to assess firms’ practices on several dimensions. Justice theory was used as a starting point to define practices within each dimension of justice: distributive, procedural and interactional. Literature from other disciplines (sociology, linguistics, psychology) was used to define precisely the different constructs belonging to the three dimensions. For instance the “empathy” construct was split, based on the literature in psychology, into cognitive and affective empathy, which allowed the precise identification of the occurrences of empathy in firms’ answers. The effects of 33 dimensions were analysed, using a sample of 523 exchanges archived from the forum Les Arnaques. A multinomial regression analysis showed that the most significant antecedent of post-complaint satisfaction was a new dimension, not previously found in the literature: the provision of evidence that the complainant’s problem had been, or was about to be, solved.

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vii The naturally occurring exchanges used for the first three steps revealed that firms’ answers were often impolite and littered with spelling mistakes. Two subsequent papers explored the phenomena of grammaticality and im/politeness.

In a fourth step, the effects of grammaticality and politeness on customers’ perceptions and behavioural outcomes were explored. Specifically, a survey was conducted to determine the effect of grammar/spelling mistakes and politeness on the perception of professionalism and on repurchase intention. Results from a PATH analysis showed that politeness and grammaticality had low or no direct effect on loyalty. However, indirect effects mediated by professionalism were strong, indicating that consumers’ repurchase intentions depend on a firm’s perceived professionalism.

Finally, in a fifth step, efforts were focused on impoliteness and on the role the communication channel plays in expressions of impoliteness. Impolite answers found on the online forum were compared with offline responses obtained in a field experiment. Unexpectedly, results from a discourse analysis showed that the highest levels of impoliteness were not reached in online exchanges, where users can hide behind anonymity, but in postal exchanges. In particular, we found that some companies returned the original complaint letter, riddled with insults. This led us to propose that impoliteness not only a matter of content (the words being used) but also of form. In this case, the letter seemed to act as a catalyst for conflict and was the trigger for verbal violence.

In terms of marketing, the following work contributes to theory building by proposing a new conceptualisation of politeness, by defining a more precise framework to analyse firms’ complaint handling practices, and by uncovering collinearity effects that may have impeded previous results. The last two steps of this thesis bring exploratory insights by showing the effects of politeness and grammaticality on consumers’ perceptions

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BACKGROUND

Dissatisfaction is an inherent part of the consumption experience. We, as consumers, have all experienced dissatisfaction at one time or another, be it in a restaurant because the meal was below our expectations, in a store that did not have our desired object in stock, online because the delivery time of a product was too long, or the delivery charges too high. Everyone, without exception, can remember an episode of dissatisfaction. Yet few of us complained. Research shows indeed that most people do not complain after an unsatisfactory experience (Stephens & Gwinner, 1998; Tax, Brown, & Chandrashekaran, 1998) and prefer to quit rather than to “voice” (Hirschmann, 1970).

Complaining gives a signal to the company that the customer sees this very act as worth the effort (Huang, 2010). A firm faced with a complaining customer should therefore seek to address the complaint in the best possible way. There is indeed a very tangible reward for those who handle complaints well: returning customers and increased profitability (Gelbrich & Roschk, 2010; Johnston, 2001; Maxham & Netemeyer, 2002; Van Vaerenbergh, Lariviere & Vermeir, 2012). Successful complaint resolution was found to be an important lever of satisfaction and loyalty (Hart, Heskett, & Sasser Jr, 1989; Tax et al., 1998; Homburg & Fürst, 2005). As paradoxical as it may seem, overall satisfaction of recovered customers may in certain circumstances be higher than for customers who had no reason to complain (Homburg & Fürst, 2005; Magnini, Ford, Markowski, & Honeycutt Jr, 2007; Michel & Meuter, 2008). On the premise that good complaint handling is beneficial to the firm, researchers have been studying for almost thirty years what makes customers complain.

Yet a majority of firms still do not answer complaints, and when they do, they do not apply recommendations made by marketing scholars in the last three decades (Davidow, 2012). Employees sometimes show deviant behaviours (Fisk, Grove, Harris, Keeffe, Daunt, Russell-Bennett & Wirtz, (2010); Grandey, 2003) that jeopardise the relationship with the customer, for example because of verbal violence and impoliteness. The complaint setting requires, however, that particular attention be paid to controlling emotions. In this context, the quality of the interaction is of utmost importance (Wieseke, Geigenmüller, & Kraus, 2012). Interpersonal qualities, like behaving politely, can help decrease tension, establish a dialogue despite the difficulties, and enhance post-complaint satisfaction. Politeness is, however, a complex construct, under-studied in the marketing literature.

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2 1. Problem definition and business rationales

1.1. Why is complaint handling research important?

The rationale of studying complaint handling draws us back initially to the importance of customer satisfaction for firms. Whatever the size of the firm, be it a sole proprietor business or a multi-national firm, the budgets spent by firms to measure satisfaction demonstrate that satisfying the customer remains a business priority (Wilson, 2002). Therefore, handling complaints well and ensuring satisfaction should also, logically, be a priority.

Electronic channels of communication have increased the potential threat represented by complaining customers voicing their dissatisfaction to the outside world. The RAGE study (2013) shows that negative word-of-mouth (WOM) propagated by dissatisfied customers touches three times as many people as positive WOM by satisfied customers does. The importance of complaint handling has never been so high, and can be expected to increase further when social media is harnessed by a majority of customers, in the future.

Despite 30 years of academic research on complaint handling, there is still no consensus among academic researchers on how to increase post-complaint satisfaction. There is, moreover, contradiction between academic and business results. For example, recent meta-analyses (Orsingher, Valentini and de Angelis, 2010; Gelbrich and Roschk, 2011) make the point that the most important antecedent of post-complaint satisfaction is tangible compensation. However, business results contradict such findings. Although attitude and apology alone are still less effective than monetary compensation, survey results based on actual customer data show that adding non-monetary remedies (e.g. an apology) to the monetary relief leads to the doubling of complaint satisfaction (RAGE study, 2013). In other words, academic researchers predict that firms should focus on compensation (either monetary, such as a reimbursement, a voucher, or a discount, or non-monetary, such as the replacement of defective goods) to satisfy complaining customers. Large surveys across industries show, however, that complaining customers are primarily expecting marks of attention in their communication with the firm, and the vast majority is frustrated by the poor interaction quality they receive (lack of empathy, lack of politeness). This contradiction should have worried academic researchers, but actually it has not.

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3 1.2. Who has to deal with complaint handling?

As shown by Homburg and Fürst (2005) good complaint handling is not a matter of sector. Be it in B2B or B2C, all industries can benefit from it. The latest edition of the RAGE (2013) study clearly shows that in B2C all industries are likely to attract complaints. There is no noticeable difference between service/goods sectors or online/offline. According to the TARP 1986 study, handling complaints well is profitable, whatever the industry. Returns on investments ranging from 15% to 400% have been calculated depending on the sector. The most spectacular ROI is in retail according to TARP, where the return can be up 400%.

Most studies like TARP focus on larger corporations. Statistics on customer satisfaction in SMEs in general and complaint handling in particular are scarce, to say the least. Specific studies on complaint handling practices in SMEs do not exist, to the best of my knowledge; results pertaining to SMEs’ practices are therefore included in larger studies, most of them American (TARP, RAGE).

This does not mean, however, that SMEs are not taken into account in relation to the improvement of complaint handling practices. To understand the implications for SMEs, the sampling strategy of this thesis was adapted to include a significant proportion of smaller businesses.

First of all, big companies bring improvements to the market that benefit customers. Major e-retailers (Amazon, Zalando, Coolblue) for instance have understood that customers may make the wrong choice, and as a consequence they provide free returns and money back guarantees to avoid facing complaints. Sooner or later, other businesses will also have to adopt such practices, including SMEs.

Second, this thesis shows that SMEs, despite their alleged proximity to their clientele, are not exempt from reproaches. Their answering rate to complaints is lower than in larger corporations, and when they answer complaints they adopt bad practices more often than larger companies do.

1.3. How big is the problem of complaint handling?

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4 1976 White House study (Best and Andreasen, 1976) and that in 2013 the majority of complainants were dissatisfied with the way their problem was handled. One of the RAGE 2013 study’s conclusions is that “dissatisfied complainants are now 12 percentage points less brand loyal than non-complainants. Therefore, there is a brand loyalty uplift only if complaints are satisfactorily resolved. Given the fact that MOST complainants are not satisfied, corporate America is spending billions of dollars annually on customer care programs that are actually losing them customers.”

Despite the amounts at stake, a majority of complaints remains unanswered (Davidow, 2012; Estelami, 2000; Grainer, Broetmann, & Cormier, 2003). This is even more surprising given that complaints received by firms represent only the tip of the iceberg. Authors agree that most dissatisfied customers do not even take the time to complain. Their expectations of complaint handling are so low that they prefer to give up. The 2006 Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study concluded that 94% of dissatisfied customers remain silent.

1.4. How has complaint handling evolved over the last decades?

The 2013 RAGE study shows that the “Number of [US] households posting information about their most serious problem on at least one website” has almost doubled between 2011 and 2013, from 13.6m to 25.2m. Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) has changed radically the way people complain. In the early 2000’s complaints made by postal mail were still proportionally higher than complaints sent by email (Harrison-Walker, 2001). Social media have led to massive changes in both the quantitative (how much do people complain) and qualitative side (how do people complain) of the complaining act. On the quantitative side, CMC has empowered customers by lowering the barriers required to voice their complaint. This has led to an explosion of complaining, through a vast array of online communication channels, not limited to Twitter and Facebook but constantly increasing with the invention of new virtual networks. On the qualitative side, the era of social media challenges the categorisation of complaining behaviour adopted by researchers (Hogreve et al. 2013). Indeed, social media complaining does not fit with the classic categorisation of private complaints, direct complaints, and third-party public complaints.

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5 will disappear. Instead, firms will probably be faced with multichannel complaining forms that they will need to address in a comprehensive and homogeneous way.

1.5. What are today’s challenges for firms in terms of complaint handling?

Today’s biggest challenge for firms is to develop technical and human capabilities to listen to all possible “voicing channels”. Complaining has become so easy for dissatisfied customers that we may even wonder whether past recommendations around the design of an easy process to lodge complaints are still relevant (Huppertz, 2007). In 2015 customers will not bother much about processes created by a company to send a complaint; customers expect that whatever the channel used to complain, the firm will be listening. Although Facebook and Twitter are the two social networks that come to mind first, other types of CMC are also being offered. Dutch e-retailer CoolBlue, for instance, deployed in January 2015 a dedicated WhatsApp channel for its customers. Registration as a Service (RaaS) is also being increasingly used to facilitate communication with the firm and reduce the incovenience imposed on the customer to give his/her contact details. A RaaS provider like Gigya is as of today providing connection capabilities with more than 100 social networks.

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6 published, complaints still represent a great opportunity to build a better business and increase competitiveness.

2. Review of the literature

Customer satisfaction (CS) has been at the nexus of business and of modern marketing for decades. It started becoming a discipline in itself after Oliver (1980) set up the stage and established the concept of expectancy disconfirmation. As soon as the early 1990’s a correlation began to emerge between customer satisfaction and profitability (Oliver 2009). Since then, countless publications have popularised ideas about the effect of satisfaction on loyalty on the one hand, and of loyalty on profitability on the other hand. Within the broader scope of satisfaction, complaints, as a tangible manifestation of dissatisfaction, also began to attract academic interest.

The literature review below is structured as follows. First, we take a broad look at customer satisfaction and the different types of antecedents. Second, we narrow down our focus to complaint handling, as an antecedent of satisfaction. Third, within the range of complaint handling practices, we explore the different conceptualisations of im/politeness.

2.1. Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction (CS) is one of the major constructs of modern marketing. Oliver (2009) defined satisfaction as “the consumer’s fulfillment response […], a judgment that a product/service feature, or the product or service itself, provided (or is providing) a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfillment, including levels of under- or over-fulfillment.”

Besides positive WOM, it is thought that increased satisfaction also leads to higher loyalty, which in turn leads to higher profits (Anderson and Mittal, 2000; Hallowell, 1996; Kumar, Smart, Maddern and Maull, 2008). Despite the tedious nature of the correlation (Oliver 2009), this relationship helped popularise CS among practitioners.

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7 He proposed seven types of comparison operators which are cognitively integrated and form the basis of a framework (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Simplified framework of satisfaction antecedents (after Oliver, 2009)

A quick overview of the different dimensions influencing satisfaction is outlined below so that the reader can position the present research within the more global picture of CS. In particular, the reader will discover that some of those dimensions pertain to complaint handling.

Expectancy disconfirmation

The expectancy disconfirmation model is widely acknowledged for its relevance. In this model the consumer forms expectations of product performance characteristics prior to purchase (Oliver 1980). The comparison process is based on using a better-than, worse-than heuristic (Oliver, Rust and Varki, 1997) and eventually results in positive disconfirmation when performance exceeds expectations, simple confirmation if it meets expectations, and negative disconfirmation when expectations exceed actual performance (Oliver 2009).

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8 Confirmation and positive disconfirmation are assumed to lead to satisfaction, whereas negative disconfirmation is an antecedent of dissatisfaction.

Need Fulfilment

Oliver (2009) draws parallels between Maslow’s needs theory, Herzberg’s two-factor analysis and the Kano approach to satisfiers and dissatisfiers, to shed light on a consumer perspective on need satisfaction theory. Products and services possess three kinds of characteristics with the potential of influencing satisfaction/dissatisfaction. Monovalent dissatisfiers are those attributes which, when flawed, cause consumer dissatisfaction. Monovalent satisfiers, on the contrary, fulfil higher-order needs and have the potential to influence satisfaction. Bivalent satisfiers are attributes which can cause both satisfaction and dissatisfaction. According to Oliver (2009), meeting expectations will at best result in avoiding dissatisfaction; extreme disconfirmations will induce exceptional emotional states (either positive or negative) which have been reported to be linked to loyalty (Vanhamme and Snelders, 2001).

Quality

Quality and satisfaction are not one and the same thing. Quality assessments are based on cues, whereas satisfaction can be judged based on any dimension, even if it is not quality related (Olivier 2010, p. 176). Quality judgements are based on the perception of what an ideal or excellent standard might be, whereas satisfaction judgements might be exempt from such ideal references. Within the quality dimension, service has therefore received particular attention. The gap model (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1985) and SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988) were the starting points of three decades of research. Complaint handling can, in a certain sense, be equated with service, and some of the dimensions, like assurance (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988), defined in SERVQUAL, are indeed inherently part of complaint handling theories.

Value

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9 because it related to the needs of customers. “Use-value” was considered to be linked to the “qualities” of the product, whereas “exchange-value” was linked to the “quantity”.

Different models have been proposed as far as the relationships between value and satisfaction are concerned (Oliver, 1999, p. 54). A tied relationship between quality and value is acknowledged, and it is classically thought that consumers derive value from quality (Oliver, 2009, p. 198). Value is therefore classically considered an antecedent of customer satisfaction. But the vagueness of the term “value” also requires that it be looked into in more detail, and in particular that the rhetoric on “value co-creation” be discussed (Grönroos 2011).

The distinction between value-in-use and value-in-exchange led to the shift from Goods-Dominant Logic (GD Logic) to Service-Dominant Logic (SD Logic) (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). In SD Logic, value is thought to be created by the customer, hence giving the firm a secondary role. This questions the reason to be of the firm (Grönross 2008) and has led to the initiation of a debate on the prevalence of this concept (e.g. Grönroos 2011).

Acknowledging that value is derived from the relationship with the firm is in itself not new (e.g. Grönroos 1997). One may also see the SERVQUAL components (Parasuraman et al. 1988) as already being part of that interaction. However the SERVQUAL dimensions (Timeliness, Accountability, Redress, Facilitation, Personal Interaction) define the firm’s response to the customer, and not what the customer can extract, in terms of value, from the interaction with the firm. In other words SERVQUAL can best describe the value extracted in one direction (firm  customer) but fails to capture the other dimension (customer  firm). The co-creation concept recognises that hearing the voice of the customer is a source of value and satisfaction for him/her. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) recognise the correlation between creation and customer satisfaction when they suggest that co-creating value is best achieved with customers who are dissatisfied with available choices.

Regret

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Equity and Inequity

Oliver (2009) classifies the concept of equity/inequity as one of the cognitive mechanisms affecting customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Equity is a construct which can intervene before the consumption process or after the consumption has taken place. When in the alpha phase (predecision), which is characterised by a decision conflict in the consumer’s cognitive process, equity is associated with price (un)fairness perception. When in the delta phase (usage and postusage), equity intervenes as a cognitive process mediating the actual performance and the regret, guilt and resignation feelings generated through it. It is how customers’ complaints are born.

2.2. Complaint handling practices

Short-term outcomes of dissatisfaction are mainly emotion-driven and consist of complaining behaviour, similar in its form to negative WOM and positive WOM. Oliver (2009) states that even satisfied consumers will find little reason to communicate with the seller about their satisfaction or discontentment. The observed overwhelming proportion of silent customers (either satisfied or dissatisfied) tends to confirm this. Following Hirschman’s (1970) Exit, Voice and Loyalty framework, customers choose either to be silent or to express (i.e. voice) their complaints or satisfaction to the firm. The firm then has an opportunity to redress the situation (in the case of discontentment) and to transform the dissatisfied customer into a satisfied one.

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CATEGORY ANTECEDENTS

FOUND

SPECIFIC MANAGERIAL RECOMMENDATIONS GENERAL MANAGERIAL

RECOMMENDATIONS Distributive justice Compensation issues (reimbursement, refund, replacement, repair, credit, overcompensation)

 Empower employees to make decisions (Boshoff, 1997; Hart et al., 2000; Johnston, 2001; Johnston and Mehra, 1995; Martinez-Tur et al., 2006; Michel, Bowen and Johnston, 2009; Spreng, Harrell and McKoy, 1995; Tax et al., 1998; Teo and Lim 2001; ).

 Ask complainants about their perception of a fair outcome (Blodgett et al., 1997).

 For the retail sector, give coupons and ensure quick response time (Goudarzi et al., 2013).

 High redress/overcompensation: no consensus. Some authors call for high redress (Mattila and Cranage, 2005), whereas others found that overcompensation does not lead to significant increase in customer satisfaction (Noone, 2012).

 Train employees to understand how to influence the consumer’s perception of justice (Rio Lanza et al., 2009; Teo and Lim, 2001; Spreng, Harrell and McKoy, 1995;

Martinez-Tur et al., 2006; Tax et al., 1998; McKoll-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003; Goodwin and Ross, 1992; Blodgett et al., 1997)

 Evaluate justice from the consumer’s viewpoint (Rio Lanza et al., 2009)

 Complaint handling should be part of employees’ job

descriptions (Martinez-Tur et al., 2006; Tax et al., 1998)

Apology  Apology and taking responsibility must be part of the recovery process (Boshoff and Leong, 1998; Davidow, 2003; Goodwin and Ross, 1990; Tax et al., 1998) and associated to a tangible compensation (Goodwin and Ross, 1992; Johnston and Fern, 1999; Mattila and Cranage, 2005).

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(apology perception is mediated by intensity, empathy and timing, as shown by Roschk & Kaiser, 2013).

 Take cultural aspects into account (Patterson et al., 2006)

 Encourage external complaints (Teo and Lim, 2001; Spreng, Harrell and McKoy, 1995; Johnston and Mehra, 1995; Fornell and Wernefelt, 1987) as well as internal ones (Johnston and Mehra, 1995)

 Teach employees the financial consequences of losing a customer

(Spreng, Harrell and McKoy, 1995; Johnston and Mehra, 1995; Hart et al., 2000) as well as the costs (financial and non-financial) incurred by customers to complain (Tax et al., 1998)

 Identify who is Procedural justice Assuming

responsibility

 Assume responsibility for the failure as it increases customer satisfaction (McKoll-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003; Nikbin et al., 2013; Tax et al. 1998).

Timing / speed of complaint handling

 Handle claims quickly and avoid delays (Boshoff, 1997; Hadwich and Keller, 2013; Hart et al., 2000; Johnston 2001; Johnston and Fern, 1999; Johnston and Mehra, 1995; Mattila and Cranage 2005; Tax et al., 1998).

 In “service separation” settings, response to a complaint should not be made too quickly (Zhou et al., 2014) as it may be interpreted as a lack of

professionalism.

Convenience  The process to lodge a complaint should be convenient and firms should avoid placing “hurdles” for the customer (Johnston, 2001; Johnston and Mehra, 1995; Tax et al., 1998).

 Several channels should be made available to the customer to complain (Mattila & Wirtz, 2004). Follow-up  Ensure a follow-up after a complaint has been

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Hart et al., 2000; Johnston, 2001).

 Process Recovery Communication (PRC) improves the satisfaction of customers (Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2012)

interacting with the customer (Tax et al., 1998)

 Measure performance (Johnston and Mehra, 1995; Teo and Lim, 2001; Johnston, 2001; Michel, Bowen and Johnston, 2009)

 Ensure that employees are willing to handle

complaints and use complaints for continuous improvement (Johnston and Mehra, 1995; Hart et al., 2000; Johnston, 2001). It is a question of the attitude that employees should have (Blodgett et al., 1997)

 In case of double-deviation scenario, use escalation and involve authority to make decision and show the customer that his/her Process control  Firms need clear internal procedures to handle

complaints (Bhandari, Tsarenko and Polonsky, 2007; Martinez-Tur et al., 2006; Goodwin and Ross, 1992; Goodwin and Ross, 1990; Johnston, 2001; Michel, Bowen and Johnston, 2009).

Flexibility  Employees should display flexibility when handling a complaint. Flexibility is positively associated with customer satisfaction (Bitner, Booms & Tetreault, 1990; Gelbrich & Roschk, 2010; Narver & Slater, 1990) Knowledge  Firms should ensure staff handling complaint is

knowledgeable (Durvasula & Lysonski, 2010, Johnston, 2001).

Interactional justice

Politeness  Answers to complaint should be polite (McKoll-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003; Blodgett et al., 1997; Mattila and Cranage, 2005; Orsingher et al., 2010) and bear markers of politeness (Dickinger & Bauernfeind, 2009; Mattsson, Lemmink & McColl, 2004)

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Blodgett et al., 1997; Mattila and Cranage, 2005; Johnston, 2001). Empathy influences post-complaint repurchase intention through gratitude and

transactional satisfaction (Simon, 2013)

voice does count (Johnston and Fern, 1999)

 Take the form of the response (letter, phone, …) into account, since

customers may have different expectations depending on the communication channel (Johnston and Fern, 1999)

 Ensure that reliable answers are provided to the complainant (Johnston, 2001)

Effort  Emphasise efforts to promote positive consumer’s emotions (Rio Lanza et al., 2009; Tax et al. 1998; McKoll-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003; Johnston and Fern, 1999). Efforts displayed by employees will influence the guests’ perception of interactional justice

(McQuilken et al., 2013) Explanation

information

 Provide explanation in case of denial (Teo and Lim, 2001; McKoll-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003; Johnston and Fern, 1999)

 Provide proactive information to moderate complaining behaviour and increase post-complaint satisfaction (Mattila and Cranage, 2005; Bradley and Sparks, 2012).

 Involve manager to provide information: the perception of the customer will be higher than when information is provided by frontline employee (Baker and Meyer, 2014)

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15 2.3. Complaint handling and the perceived justice framework

Perceived justice and its categorisation into distributive, procedural and interactional justice has been accepted by marketing scholars as a framework of reference to analyse complaining behaviours (Tax, Brown, & Chandrashekaran, 1998; Homburg & Fürst, 2005; del Rio-Lanza, Vázquez-Casielles, & Díaz-Martín, 2008; Orsingher et al., 2010; Gelbrich and Roschk, 2010). This framework has been applied mainly to the consumer’s side, i.e. the analysis of the complaining behaviour itself, and much less to the organisational side, i.e. how firms respond to complaints (Davidow, 2003, 2012; Homburg et al., 2010).

Justice theory describes the way protagonists perceive an exchange by dividing perceptions into three justice categories: distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Distributive justice corresponds to the allocation of resources and how the protagonists perceive the outcome of the exchange, with a particular focus on the fairness of distribution of those resources between protagonists. Applied to a complaint setting, distributive justice predicts the equity perceived by the consumer in relation to the complaint handling on the basis of the resources which the consumer will be allowed and those the firm will keep (Maxham & Netemeyer, 2002). Procedural justice corresponds to the underlying rules and procedures which will serve as a basis for conflict resolution, and concerns the fairness of the rules used to resolve the conflict. Applied to a complaint setting, procedural justice corresponds to a consumer’s perceived fairness of the rules and procedures that the firm will use to handle the complaint. The last component, interactional justice, is defined by sociologist Schermerhorn (1996) as the degree to which the people affected by a decision are treated with dignity and respect. Interactive justice describes the manner used to exchange information within any exchange, and can be perceived differently depending on how it actually occurs.

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16 Davidow (2000) reduces the organisational answer to six components playing a role in perceived justice. Three components comprise procedural justice: timeliness (the speed of answering the complaint), facilitation (how easy it is to complain), and credibility (credibility of a firm’s response); two comprise distributive justice: redress (the compensation allowed by the firm), and apology; one aligns with interactional justice: attentiveness (courtesy and attentiveness when answering the complaint). For each category of justice the author proposes a wide range of different components and produces statistical results at the level of the justice category. They conclude that “to achieve even a modest satisfaction with complaint handling, a firm must attain a relatively high score on all three justice components” (Tax et al., 1998: 69).

This conclusion echoes Sabadie et al., (2006) who state that marketing research has yet to yield a consistent hierarchy of importance among the three justice theory components. Meta-analyses have indeed delivered contradictory results. Teo and Lim (2001) and Orsingher et al., (2010) observed the predominant role of distributive justice in customer satisfaction, while other researchers found procedural justice (McColl-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003; Oliver, 2009), or interactional justice (del Rio-Lanza et al., 2009) predominant.

Among the three “pillars” of the perceived justice framework, interactional justice plays a particular role in this thesis. It incorporates the politeness construct, which appears to be important in a complaint handling setting (McColl-Kennedy & Sparks, 2003; Blodgett, Hill, & Tax, 1997; Mattila & Cranage, 2005; Johnston, 2001). The next section will provide the opportunity to explore this construct in greater detail and to discover that the marketing conceptualisation may not be entirely accurate.

2.4. Conceptualisations of politeness

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17

Politeness conceptualisation in the marketing literature

Politeness has been shown to be directly associated with customer loyalty (Chebat & Slusarczyk, 2005; Dayan et al., 2008. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, only two papers deal with politeness in a complaint handling setting. Mattsson et al., (2004) investigated complaint letters and evaluated procedural and relational politeness. Relational politeness is measured by counting the frequency of “Thank You”, “Please”, Look forward” and “Appreciate”, whereas procedural politeness is the sum of the following variables: the opening phrase “Dear” and the closing phrases “yours sincerely” and “yours truly”. The approach of Dickinger and Bauernfeind (2009) is similar in terms of methodology, and was applied to the answers provided by airlines to either fictitious complaints or general enquiries. The measurement of politeness relied on checking the presence/absence of an appropriate salutation, an acknowledgement, the firm’s representative’s identity and the firm’s identity.

Lerman (2006) took a quite different approach to the politeness dimension and investigated the moderating effect that a consumer’s politeness had on the propensity to complain about a negative service encounter. Her results show a negative relationship between a customer’s politeness and propensity to complain. In other words, “Impolite consumers are more likely than polite consumers to use voice” (Lerman, 2006, p. 97). Of particular interest is the use that this author makes of sociolinguistics literature to develop a politeness scale based on face-threatening acts (FTAs) (Brown & Levinson, 1978) applied to a complaining behaviour setting. This represents to the best of the author’s knowledge a quite unique, yet isolated, attempt to apply Brown and Levinson (1978) concepts to the marketing sphere.

Politeness conceptualisations in the sociolinguistics literature

Sociolinguistics work on politeness is rooted in the seminal work of Brown and Levinson (1978) and in the theories of Goffman (1967). Politeness is conceptualised by these authors as the strategies deployed by participants in an exchange to protect/threaten the faces of their interlocutor.

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18 and approved of) claimed by interactants". The negative face was defined as “the want of every 'competent adult member' that his actions be unimpeded by others”.

Figure 2. Possible strategies for doing FTAs (adapted from Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 60)

Any exchange can be assumed to affect protagonists’ faces, and FTAs involving both faces are inherent to any interaction. According to Brown and Levinson (1978), politeness is used as a strategy to reformulate the message when a FTA cannot be avoided and when a recipient’s face is threatened. They proposed a schema of possible politeness strategies that by now has become a classical of sociolinguistics (see Figure 2).

In a complaint setting, most interactions happen between two protagonists: the firm and the complaining consumer. If we apply Brown and Levinson’s theory, four faces should therefore be taken into account: the positive and negative faces of the firm and the positive and negative faces of the customer. The nature of the FTA is summed up in Table 2.

Do the FTA

on record

without redressive action, badly ("bald

on record") with redressive action positive politeness negative politeness off record

Do not do the FTA

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19

Threatening act for

Negative face Positive face

Firm

The negative face of the firm can be threatened by:

 Making a promise to the customer

 Accepting an offer made by the customer

 Making an offer reluctantly to the customer

The positive face of the firm can be threatened by:

 Confessing a previous FTA

 Accepting a compliment

 Confessing guiltiness

 Apologising

 Acknowledging the customer’s complaint

 Not controlling one’s own reaction or emotions

Customer

The negative face of the customer can be threatened by a firm’s :

 Request to provide evidence and factual information

 Ban on the customer from doing something, threats, warnings

 Suggestions, advice, reminders

 Expressions of strong negative emotions

The positive face of the customer can be threatened by a firm’s:

 Criticism, disapproval of the customer’s behaviour or arguments

 Irony, reproaches, accusations, reprimands

 Mocking, irreverence or mention of taboo topics

 Blatant non-cooperation (interruption)

 Raising emotionally-charged or divisive topics

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20

Impoliteness

Culpeper et al. (2003, p. 1547) asked the question “Why do we need an impoliteness framework? We’ve already got bald on record”. Although bald on record indeed accommodates impoliteness, a consensus emerged to stress that this super-strategy was insufficient to encapsulate all forms of impoliteness. Impoliteness frameworks have subsequently been developed (Lachenicht, 1980; Austin, 1990; Culpeper, 1996). In his early work, Lachenicht (1980) was very much inspired by Brown and Levinson (1978) and proposed four super-strategies of impoliteness : (1) off record when the insulter uses for instance irony and insinuations, (2) bald on record, which is of the same kind as in Brown and Levinson (1978) terminology, (3) positive aggravation, when the addressee is shown disapproval, and (4) negative aggravation that attacks the addressee’s social position.

The early categorisation by Lachenicht (1980) has evolved over the years and in this thesis we adopted the categories proposed by Culpeper et al. (2003). These authors distinguish five super-strategies of impoliteness: (1) bald on record impoliteness when there is a deliberate intention by the speaker to threaten and attack the faces of the hearer; (2) positive impoliteness that threatens the hearer’s positive face, for instance through the use of taboo words, being unsympathetic, snubbing or excluding the other; (3) negative impoliteness, which threatens the hearer’s negative face by ridiculing, frightening her/him or, more generally, through the invasion of his/her space; (4) sarcasm or mock politeness, which Culpeper et al. (2003) define as “surface realizations”; (5) withholding politeness, which happens when there is no answer although one is expected.

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21 3. Definition, Rationale and Scope of the Study

Several gaps can be identified from the literature review.

First of all, there is a consensus on the paucity of academic results on the organisational side of complaint handling: much time and effort have been dedicated to understanding consumers’ complaining behaviours and in particular how they arise; much less on what firms do in practice when faced with complaints (Davidow, 2003; Homburg et al., 2010; Davidow, 2012). Theory could therefore be advanced by studying what firms actually do when handling complaints, what kind of practices they develop and how those practices contribute to post-complaint satisfaction.

Second, when handling complaints, one particular aspect regards so-called “dysfunctional behaviours”. Employees displaying such behaviours are actually working against the interests of the company, which can translate into verbal violence against customers (Fisk et al., 2010; Grandey, 2003). Such behaviours have been studied mainly in relation to synchronous interactions (contacts made by phone or face-to-face at points of sale) but more rarely in relation to written interactions. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the only studies on verbal violence and impoliteness in firms-customers exchanges were carried out in the linguistics field. Little attention seems to have been paid to impoliteness and verbal violence in the field of marketing. A theoretical contribution could be made through the exploration of such behaviours in a complaint handling setting, and in particular in asynchronous exchanges (email, letters) where the firm feels less time pressure to provide a satisfactory answer.

Third, the consumer-focused perspective taken by scholars led them study how firms’ complaint handling practices were perceived. For instance, what Tax et al. (1998) measured in terms of interactional justice remains at the level of perceptions. Politeness, for instance, was measured using a 4-item instrument that assessed the feelings of the complainant (“I felt I was treated rudely”, p. 73). However, what shapes the perception of im/politeness in consumers’ eyes is not covered yet by the marketing literature. This is quite surprising, given the massive body of research that exists in linguistics on politeness. A contribution could be made by bringing the two fields together and applying sociolinguistics’ conceptualisations of politeness to the marketing field. This may allow understanding of how politeness can be shaped in a complaint handling setting and which “parameters” firms should pay special attention to when addressing complainants’ expectations.

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22 that the majority of firms still do not answer complaints (Davidow, 2012; Estelami, 2000; Grainer, Broetmann, & Cormier, 2003). Davidow (2012) reminds us that this problem is not new and that a multidisciplinary approach may be needed, in close cooperation with managers. In his review of 25 years of research on the subject, Davidow (2012) points to the lack of definition of some variables. A first answer could be supplied to Davidow’s (2012) legitimate question by investigating whether the very definition of some important antecedents may have actually impeded this implementation. If some antecedents of post-complaint satisfaction are not defined well or precisely enough, one may indeed expect, on the one hand, that academic results would be impacted, and on the other hand that implementation would be made more difficult for firms because of this lack of definition.

4. Research Problem/Questions and Hypothesis

Based on the research gaps described previously, we propose to investigate several research questions that pertain to one central research problem: what is the role of politeness for complaining customers?

4.1. What influences perceived politeness?

Marketing scholars have conceptualised politeness in terms of markers of politeness (Dickinger & Bauernfeind, 2009; Mattsson et al., 2004). Sociolinguists have followed a different approach. Brown and Levinson’s (1978) theory of face and Grice’s (1975) maxims have long been acknowledged as the sociolinguistics frameworks of reference for politeness. Given the importance of interactional justice (and in particular of politeness) in driving post-complaint satisfaction, we propose to assess quantitatively the role of the dimensions belonging to each model (markers of politeness, theory of face, Grice’s maxims) and to determine which one(s) has(have) the strongest correlation(s) with perceived politeness.

4.2. What drives post-complaint satisfaction in an online setting?

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23 (2003, 2012) and Homburg et al.’s (2010) calls would be to use this model to assess firms’ complaint handling practices. This could contribute to theory by identifying practices (both good and bad) possibly not mentioned before by scholars. In a second step, correlating those practices with post-complaint satisfaction could help firms with the selective implementation of the practices fostering the most customer satisfaction.

4.3. Is collinearity caused by the lack of definition of antecedents to post-complaint satisfaction?

Some of the antecedents of post-complaint satisfaction have been insufficiently described (Davidow, 2012) and researched by marketing scholars in the past. As the literature review shows, marketing scholars remained at the level of customers’ perceptions, especially in so far as the components of interactive justice are concerned. A theoretical contribution is proposed, through the exploration of collinearity effects between three long-acknowledged antecedents of post-complaint satisfaction: politeness, empathy and apology.

4.4. How does politeness influence customers’ perceptions of a firm and does it affect future behaviour?

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24 4.5. What forms does impoliteness take in firms-customers interactions?

Marketing scholars have issued myriad recommendations for handling complaints better and increasing satisfaction. Given the central role played by customer satisfaction in modern marketing, the occurrence of deviant or dysfunctional employees’ behaviours appears incompatible with business goals. We propose to study one form of such deviant behaviours in a complaint setting: impoliteness. A discourse analysis of impoliteness, following the framework proposed by Culpeper et al. (2003), could allow us to explore the reasons behind a lack of politeness. Based on Neurauter-Kessels (2011) we further hypothesise the influence of the communication channel on forms of impoliteness. We propose to compare two asynchronous datasets (CMC vs. postal mail) in a similar setting, to disentangle the role of the communication channel, and in particular to confirm (or not) the effect of anonymity in CMC on the occurrence of impoliteness.

This leads to the formulation of the main hypothesis that will guide this thesis: “Politeness is positively correlated to post-complaint satisfaction and repurchase intention”.

5. Research methods

A mixed approach was followed throughout the research project (see Table 3), the initial goal being to rely as much as possible on natural occurring data (Silverman, 2013).

By and large, we can distinguish two methodological phases in the research project. In Phase 1 (papers 1, 2 and 3) the foundations were set up to assess quantitatively the influence of various firms’ complaint handling practices on customer satisfaction. In Phase 2, more exploratory methodologies were used, either quantitative (paper 4) or qualitative (paper 5), to deepen the knowledge around politeness in a complaint setting.

5.1. Phase 1 of the research project

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25 straightforward to describe, others were much more nebulous, and required drawing upon the literature from other disciplines. For instance, empathy, considered as one global antecedent in the marketing literature, had to be split into four different situations pertaining to cognitive and affective empathy (Tettegah and Anderson, 2007). All dimensions could be described precisely with the exception of politeness. This led us to produce paper 1, and to quantitatively assess the antecedents of perceived politeness in order to find out how to best define politeness-related actions taken by firms when answering complaints.

These antecedents of politeness were then integrated back into the coding guide and a large sample of naturally occurring data was double-blind coded (523 exchanges). In the course of coding, new emerging categories were added (cf. Mayring 2004) and the coding revised accordingly.

Eventually the same dataset and coding were reused to explore collinearity effects between antecedents of post-complaint satisfaction (paper 3). Cramer’s V were computed as a measure of association between variables that were found to be insufficiently defined in the marketing literature.

5.2. Phase 2 of the research project

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26 Phase 1 also gave us the opportunity to detect impolite answers posted online (hence publicly visible) that we attributed to dysfunctional employees’ behaviours (Fisk et al., 2010; Grandey, 2003; Reynolds and Harris, 2006). To explore the phenomenon of how such behaviours can arise, we set up a field experiment that allowed us to collect primary offline data (postal answers to complaints). This allowed us to explore qualitatively (through a discourse analysis) the forms of impoliteness in a complaint handling situation in both datasets, and by means of comparison, to also investigate the role of the communication channel.

5.3. Data ownership

The data used in this thesis comes from three distinct sources:

 A dataset of complaints made on a French public forum (papers 1, 2, 3 and 5) called LesArnaques.com

The online forum Les Arnaques is public, and freely accessible to anyone without prior registration. The forum is managed by a not-for-profit organisation. I informed, proactively, the president of the association of my interest in the forum and my willingness to carry out academic research based on the exchanges posted on the forum. The president of the association gave his approval and the exchanges were subsequently archived in pdf format to keep their integrity.

 A survey conducted with students (paper 4)

This survey was conducted among students attending a course taught by one co-author, and those attending the course of this thesis’ supervisor. All data used in paper 4 was collected by the thesis’ author.

 A field experiment conducted with Belgian firms (paper 5)

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28

Paper Methodological approach Detailed methodology Sample

1 Qualitative  Double-blind coding of the antecedents of politeness drawn from the marketing and linguistics literature

 Double-blind rating of perceived politeness

Natural occurring data: 184 firms’ answers to customers’ complaints posted on a public forum

Quantitative Logistic regression between perceived politeness (dependent variable) and antecedents of politeness (independent variables).

2 Qualitative  Double-blind coding of 31 antecedents of post-complaint satisfaction (coded as binary variables)

 Measurement of response time + word count in firm’s answer

 Double-blind rating of perceived post-complaint satisfaction on a 3-point Likert scale

523 naturally occurring exchanges between complainants and 179 firms

Quantitative Multinomial regression analysis between perceived post-complaint satisfaction (dependent variable) and 33 antecedents (31 binary variables + response time + word count).

3 Quantitative Double-blind coding from paper 2 was reused to measure the association (through Cramer’s V) between antecedents of post-complaint satisfaction. Three antecedents were chosen based on Davidow (2003).

523 naturally occurring exchanges between complainants and 179 firms

4 Quantitative 2x2 experiment followed by a PATH analysis 384 undergraduate students

5 Qualitative Discourse analysis following Culpeper (2008) impoliteness framework of 2 datasets :

 Public : dataset made of impolite firms’ answers to customer complaints posted on an online complaint resolution forum.

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29

The data from the double-blind coding from paper 2 was reused and answers containing a FTA for the customer faces were selected. A double-blind selection was done of the impolite messages

 Private: field experiment. Dataset made of impolite answers received after a similar complaint was sent offline (by post) to a representative sample of 2436 companies in Belgium

 8 impolite answers in the private sample

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30 6. Articles overview

6.1. Article 1: How is perceived politeness formed?

Title: Politeness Matters: The Antecedents and Consequences of Politeness in a Complaint Handling Setting

Background and Objective:

Research in complaint handling has confirmed the role that interactions between a firm and a dissatisfied customer play.

The aim of this paper was two-fold. On the one hand, we wanted to test a conceptualisation of politeness that went beyond what had been done in marketing before. Drawing on linguistic theories and using long-acknowledged concepts in linguistic research, we tested a quantitative model of antecedents to perceived politeness (study 1).

On the other hand, we wanted to prove that being polite in complaint handling exchanges is not of minor importance and can actually shape customers’ perceptions and intended behaviour (study 2).

Findings and Contribution:

Results from study 1 showed that the formalist framework used in academic marketing research is incomplete, and demonstrated that a sociolinguistics approach allows for a better analysis of politeness strategies. In practice, using common markers of politeness is not the most efficient strategy for increasing the perception of politeness. Firms should therefore learn how to avoid face-threatening acts.

In study 2, we showed that politeness enables the complainant to form an impression of the professionalism of the firm, and also shapes his/her repurchase intentions.

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31 6.2. Article 2: A quantitative assessment of post-complaint satisfaction on an e-complaint

forum

Title: Online Complaint Handling Practices: Company Strategies and their Effects upon Post-complaint Satisfaction

Twenty-five years of research in the field have focused on the customer’s side, leaving scholars with much less insight into actual organisational practices (Davidow, 2003; Homburg et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2012). Contradictory results have been published as to which dimensions influence post-complaint satisfaction. Even recent meta-analysis is not conclusive as to what firms should actually do (Orsingher et al., 2010; Gelbrich and Roschk, 2010). As a matter of fact, very little is yet known for instance about how organisational practices are shaped by computer-mediated communication, in spite of CMC representing the future of customers-firms interactions (Davidow, 2012).

The aim of this paper is to shed light on actual complaint handling practices of firms in an online context, and to find out which of those practices have the strongest effects on post-complaint satisfaction.

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32 6.3. Article 3: Exploring collinearity effects among antecedents of post-complaint

satisfaction

Title: An Exploratory Study Of Collinearity Effects Among Antecedents Of Post-Complaint Satisfaction

Hundreds of studies on complaining behaviour have been carried out, in a variety of sectors, settings and countries, and have even been aggregated into a meta-analysis to draw general conclusions (Orsignher et al., 2010; Gelbrich & Roschk, 2010). Despite all this accumulated wisdom, Davidow (2012) questioned the very meaning of the results, and in particular whether the researchers all had the same understanding of the variables they measured.

The purpose of this paper is to tackle the issue of definition for some of the most often cited, yet also the most subjective antecedents of post-complaint satisfaction: empathy, politeness and apology. Our intention is to provide first of all more detailed definitions of these constructs. In a second step, we propose to explore possible collinearity effects between them, and eventually provide guidelines for future research, to avoid such interactions and to improve research results.

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33 6.4. Article 4: How writing skills and politeness influence perceived firms’ professionalism

Title: Online Communication: What Do We Infer About the Professionalism Of Firms From Their Answers To Complaints, And How Does It Affect Repurchase Intention?

The emergence of online tools and social media has empowered customers in search of interactions with firms, leading to a dramatic increase in online conversations. Whether these exchanges are of a private nature (emails) or public (social media), all lack contextual cues enabling customers to fully assess the thoughts and feelings of the sender (Adkins and Brashers, 1995). As a consequence, customers must process information from a socially impoverished source, form perceptions and take decisions on the basis of written cues only. This poses communication issues that “are perhaps unique in human history” (McAndrew and De Jonge, 2011).

In the context of complaint management, perception forming and decision making is of particular importance, as it will condition whether or not the customer will give the firm a second chance. Firms must therefore understand which cues are being processed by customers to decide to stay loyal, and must make sure they control them to influence the outcome of the decision making process in their favour.

Grammar and spelling are obvious cues to rely upon in order to form an impression of the sender (Carr and Stefaniak, 2012), along with politeness, which is an inherent part of service quality (Lloyd and Luk, 2011). Despite the importance of proper complaint handling for firms, no research to date has studied the combined effect of politeness and grammaticality. Moreover, the possible correlations between perceived professionalism and loyalty, one of the main goals for firms in their pursuit for growth, also remain unclear.

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34 6.5. Article 5: Does the communication channel play a role in forms of impoliteness?

Title: Influence of the Communication Channel on the Forms of Impoliteness in Firms-Customers Interactions

Past research on verbal violence has shown that it may coexist with certain forms of politeness (Fracchiolla, 2008; Fracchiola et al., 2013). This study aims at investigating verbal violence in companies’ answers to customers’ complaints, where politeness on the part of the company should be the norm.

Marketing research has recently developed an interest in the deviant behaviours (aggressiveness, violence) of firms interacting with customers (Fisk et al., 2010; Grandey, 2003). Such behaviours were explained as employees venting their emotions while interacting in real time with customers: either in stores (Reynolds and Harris, 2006) or in call centres (Grandey et al., 2004). Our objective is to extend those results by analysing and comparing two written and asynchronous datasets: an online complaint resolution forum and letters received by postal mail in answer to a complaint. We propose to analyse the role of the communication channel on im/politeness forms and how they coexist within answers sent by the firms.

Theory predicts that impoliteness may be expected in a public setting where anonymity is the norm (Neurauter-Kessels, 2011). We find indeed impoliteness in the online dataset, mainly in the form of sarcasm.