Abstract:
In any service environment, there is a strong possibility that customers’
expectations and the actual service delivery are not in unison. When
service failures do occur, customers’ attitudes towards complaining
directly infl uence their actual complaint behaviour. As not all customers
want to build relationships with service providers, it is imperative that
service providers gain a deeper understanding of the behaviour, and
specifi cally the complaint behaviour, of those customers who do have
relationship intentions. The purpose of this study was to determine
the infl uence of relationship intention on customers’ attitudes towards
complaining and complaint behaviour following a service failure within
the cell phone industry. Convenience sampling was used, and 605
respondents participated in the study. The results indicate that the
majority of respondents who participated in this study had a propensity
to complain, and that respondents with high relationship intentions are
more likely to voice a billing error to their cell phone network provider
than respondents with low relationship intentions. Furthermore,
relationship intention should be considered as a variable that could
infl uence customers’ attitudes towards complaining and complaint
behaviour. The results make a valuable theoretical contribution and
have managerial implications for service providers in the cell phone
industry.
