A Study On Customer Complaint Behavior Based On Psychological Contract Violation Under Online Shopping Environment

With the development of the Internet in recent years, the online shopping has rapidly developed as a new kind of shopping mode. But with the development of online shopping, it also gradually highlights some problems. Many online merchants don’t perform their responsibilities and obligations in accordance with the expectations of consumers, which leads to customer complaint behaviors.In order to study the responsibilities and obligations of online merchants during the process of online shopping, this study introduce psychological contract which originally exists in the field of organizational behavior into the online marketing situation, and use the concept of psychological contract violation to describe the customers’ sense when online merchants don’t fulfill the responsibilities and obligations of the psychological contract. Some scholars through the empirical study found that in the field of the traditional marketing, there has significant correlation between psychological contract violation and customer complaint behavior. This study believes that there also exists significant correlation between psychological contract violation and customer complaint behavior in the online shopping environment, and the regulation of the relationship will be affected by different factors.By analyzing related literature review, this research redefines the concepts and dimensions of variables in the online shopping environment, such as psychological contract, psychological contract violation, customer complaint behaviors, perceived complaint value, perceived complaint cost. The author firstly modifies and improves the survey questionnaires in the online shopping environment through in-depth interview, secondly selects the shopping users which often buy things and services in the B2C and C2C shopping website as research object, thirdly uses the SPSS statistical software to analyze the473questionnaires through actor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis.The empirical results show that psychological contract violation can be divided into two dimensions, such as transactional psychological contract violation and relational psychological contract violation. Customer complaint behavior can be divided into four dimensions, such as direct complaint, the third party complaint, negative word-of-mouth, silence resistance. Transactional psychological contract violation has significant positive correlation with direct complaint, negative word-of-mouth and silence resistance. Relational psychological contract violation has significant positive correlation with the third party complaint and silence resistance. Customer demographics have a significant role in regulating the relationship between psychological contract violation and customer complaint behavior. Confident and conservative personality traits have a negative significant role in regulating the relationship between transactional psychological contract violation and negative word-of-mouth. Perceived complaint value has a negative significant role in regulating the relationship between transactional psychological contract violation and negative word-of-mouth. Perceived complaint cost has a positive significant role in regulating the relationship between transactional psychological contract violation and silence resistance. Perceived complaint cost also has a positive significant role in regulating the relationship between relational psychological contract violation and silence resistance.In conclusion, there has significant correlation between psychological contract violation and customer complaint behavior. The individual customer characteristics (customer demographic characteristics and customer personality traits) and situational factors (perceived complaint value, perceived complaint cost) have a certain significant role in regulating the relationship between psychological contract violation and customer complaint behavior. These results have important significances in helping online merchants to improve the level of their products and services, enhance customer loyalty.