The Empirical Testing Of The Relationship Between Customer Complaint Satisfaction And Customer Loyalty Based On The Justice Theory

As the competition intensifies, companies have recognized that the cost of creating a new customer is greater than retaining an old one. The marketing strategy has changed into the defensive from the offensive. Therefore, the enterprise strategies start to focus on improving customer satisfaction continually, enhancing customer loyalty actively and maintaining the relationship with the customer. As the important content of the customer relationship management, complaint handing gets more and more attention from the scholars.It is impossible for a company to avoid any mistake in the process when it provides goods or service to the customer; the service failures will be inevitable. After the failure happened, if customer complaint to the company, it would has the chance to win customer back again. Handling customer complaints properly can make dissatisfied customer become satisfied, even loyal. The issue of customer complaint has become a hot topic for both marketing practitioners and scholars.For a long time, scholars have been studying the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty under regular condition without product or service failure. Few scholars have studied the relationship between them in the context of service failure. Although a few scholars thought customer complaint satisfaction has a positive effect on customer loyalty, few ones tested it through empirical study. Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are core concepts of marketing. The definition of customer satisfaction in the existed literatures divided into two parts. The first one, defined it from scope, divided into transaction-specific satisfaction and accumulated satisfaction; the second one defined it from nature, divided into cognitive satisfaction and emotional satisfaction. The paper applies the first viewpoint; divide the satisfaction into complaint handling satisfaction, a kind of transaction-specific satisfaction, and overall satisfaction, a kind of accumulated satisfaction. A popular definition of loyalty was developed by Oliver (1999), he thought, loyalty is a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior. He also considered that loyalty is a rational action and customer will be loyal only when he is satisfied in a long time. As a specific satisfaction, complaint satisfaction will influence the customer loyalty directly or influence it via overall satisfaction indirectly? This is major problem the paper will answer. In addition, we introduce the justice theory into the theory model. The perception of justice from social exchange theory, it was introduced into the marketing research in 1970. The scholars believed that customer would compare the benefits and output with the others. They will satisfy only when they feel fair. The justice theory has been applied widely into a lot of papers of service failure and recovery. It has been accepted as standard of the effects of service recovery. Almost scholars approve that the justice should divide into three latitudes, including distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice. (Smith, 1998; Tax, 1998, Maxham, 2002)In the context of the service failure, the paper put the justice, complaint satisfaction, overall satisfaction and customer loyalty into the research model, using structural equation analysis method to discuss the relationships between the variables.The results show each of the three latitudes has a positive effect on the complaint satisfaction. The effect of the interactional justice is the greatest; the second one is distributive justice, the effect of the procedural justice is the smallest. Although Complaint satisfaction has positive effect on customer loyalty, the influence was minor. It influence customer loyalty via overall satisfaction indirectly, the indirect effect was greater than the direct one.Based on the findings of the study, firstly, we think the enterprises should pay more attention to the perception of the justice when they deal with the customer complaints. There will be higher level of complaint satisfaction only when customer feels fair. Secondly, with the development of the level of consumption and consumption concept, customer pays more and more attention to the human relationship. Whether the employee is enthusiastic or courtesy, these have become more and more important when customer evaluates his consumption experience. The material compensation also can improve customer satisfaction. Therefore, enhance customer perception of interactional justice and distributive justice can influence complaint satisfaction positively. Finally, though handling the complaints properly can eliminate the dissatisfaction and enhance customer loyalty, it mainly influences loyalty via overall satisfaction indirectly. Loyalty is a rational action. Customer will be loyal only when they are satisfied in a long time. Although handling complaints properly can make the unsatisfied customer become satisfied, retain dissatisfied customer, it can't improve customer loyalty once overall satisfaction decrease when a company lay out the problem happening. Complaint satisfaction can enhance customer loyalty only on the basis of higher overall satisfaction。...