City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 37–44

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City, Culture and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ccs

Impact of culture on dissatisfied customers: An empirical study

Jean-Charles Chebat *,1, Lamia Kerzazi, Haithem Zourrig
HEC Montréal, 3000 Côte Ste-Catherine, Montréal (Qc), Canada H2T 3A7

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: In multicultural societies, service firms have to pay more attention to the impact of culture on the ways
Culture how dissatisfaction is felt and expressed by customers. Based on a theoretical framework derived from
Collectivism the Cognition–Affect–Behavior (C–A–B) model (Lazarus, 1991), this research investigates the moderator
Individualism effects of culture. The study takes place in the field of fast-food services, where negative critical incidents
Critical incidents
(NCI) are frequent. The sample is made of 300 customers originate from 39 countries. Results support that
Dissatisfaction
culture moderates significantly emotional and behavioral responses following a NCI: collectivist custom-
ers believe that the service provider is more receptive to their complaints, are less affected emotionally,
complain less but use negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) more often than individualistic customers do.
Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed along with future research avenues.
Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Managing complaints
Complaining behavior has been one of the main research
interests in marketing (Bearden & Teel 1983; Day, 1984;
Resnik & Harmon, 1983; Richins, 1983a; Richins, 1987;
Singh, 1988; Singh, 1990a; Singh, 1990b; TARP, 1979; TARP
Technical Assistance Research Programs, 1986; Westbrook,
1987), to suggest best ways of redressing situations stem-
ming from service failures (Clark & Kaminski, 1989; Gilly,
1987; Goodwin, Smith, & Ross, 1989; Lewis, 1982; Ross &
Oliver, 1984; TARP, 1979; TARP, 1986) and to enhance cus-
tomer loyalty (Oliver, 1980; Richins, 1983b).
Previous works in marketing have recognized the key
role of managing complaints in maximizing customers’ loy-
alty, especially for firms practicing defensive marketing
(Fornell & Wernerfelt, 1987; Hart, Heskett, & Sasser,
1990). Accordingly service firms have to learn more about
how their organizations can improve their relationship
with customers through a close examination of service fail-
ures (Hart et al., 1990).
Indeed complaints provide managers with useful infor-
mation to enhance service quality, as pointed out by
Lovelock (1996), ‘‘the more complaints you can generate,
the better”. In this line, Rust, Zahorik, and Keningham
(1995) advocated that dissatisfied customers should be
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 514 340 6846; fax: +1 514 340 6432.
E-mail address: jean-charles.chebat@hec.ca (J.-C. Chebat).
1
Affiliate professor at RMS (France).
encouraged to complain for the good of the company, since
‘‘if a customer is unhappy but does not complain, then the
company risks losing that customer, along with that cus-
tomer’s future profit stream” (p. 181). When dissatisfied
customers fail to complain, companies are likely to miss
the opportunity of redressing the type of the problem and
than to learn about mistakes, through the feedback from
dissatisfied customers. This point is also stressed by other
researchers (e.g. Fornell & Wernerfelt, 1987; Hirschman,
1970). In this vein, Blodgett and Anderson (2000) explicitly
recommended that ‘‘it is beneficial to encourage dissatis-
fied customers to seek redress, because these customers
(i.e., complainants) provide retailers the opportunity to ad-
dress and remedy the problem” (p. 322).
In fact, most dissatisfied customers may fail to commu-
nicate their dissatisfaction to the service provider. Indeed
few customers complain while many of them prefer to ex-
press their dissatisfaction through other channels and
other behavioral responses such as negative word-of-
mouth and exit (Andreasen, 1985; HALL, Press, Ganey, &
Hall, 1997; Huppertz, 2003; Rhoades, 1988; Richins,
1983b; TRAP, 1996). This may be explained by several rea-
sons, such as customer feeling that such complaints are
useless or the low propensity of seeking redress.
However, culture may also explain why some customers
will be more pone to voice their dissatisfaction directly to
the service provider by complaining whereas other will
simply exit the relationship with the service provider or en-
gage in spreading a negative word-of-mouth. Indeed some

1877-9166/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.ccs.2010.04.004
38 J.-C. Chebat et al. / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 37–44
customers may fail to complain because complaining is
perceived as embarrassing and jeopardizing relationships
with the service provider.
This study pertains to understand how the individual-
ism/collectivism (I/C) dimension of culture moderates the
complaining process. This question is all the more impor-
tant since market globalization and immigration make
firms very sensitive to the cultural dimension of complain-
ing, especially multinational companies based in interna-
tional markets as well local firms serving multiethnic
markets.
2. Impact of culture on complaining
Hofstede (1991), Hofstede (1994, Hofstede (2003) de-
signed a five-dimension model of culture: individualism/
collectivism, power distance, masculinity-feminity, uncer-
tainty avoidance and time orientation. The first factor
explaining more variance than the others in this typology
is individualism/collectivism (I/C) and is our focus in this
study.
This dimension reflects the strength of the social bond
between the person and other individuals: in individualis-
tic societies, a person focuses on himself/herself and his/
her immediate family. Beyond this social horizon, interper-
sonal bonds are weaker. Conversely, in collectivist socie-
ties, individuals are integrated within tightly cohesive
groups, which provide them security in exchange for
loyalty.
Culture also greatly influences consumers’ behavior in
such ways. When a NCI is experienced in a context where
people from different cultures are involved, the incident
is felt as more negative than in a homogenous cultural con-
text (Strauss & Mang, 1999). Culture influences criteria
used by consumers in their evaluation of service quality
(Anderson, Fornell, & Lehmann, 1994; Donthu & Yoo,
1998; Furrer, Liu, & Sudharshan, 2000; Mattila, 1999). Con-
sequently, no matter if consumers and service providers of
different cultural origins may react differently to the same
quality cues, feel and express different emotions. (Richins &
Verhage, 1985; Villarreai-Camacho, 1983; Watkins &
Raymond, 1996).
Collectivist consumers tend to complain less, to be more
prone to word-of-mouth, to be more loyal to the service
provider than individualistic ones (Liu, Furrer, & Sudhar-
shan, 2001). The impact of culture can be understood by
the way consumers make attribution of the service failures,
(i.e., who is responsible for the incident).
In this study we posit that the cognitive appraisal of the
NCI as well as elucidated emotions and behavioral reac-
tions are all biased by cultural orientations (Laroche, Teng,
Chebat, & Michon, 2003; Zourrig, Chebat, & Toffoli, 2009a;
Zourrig, Chebat, & Toffoli, 2009b).
2.1. Attribution and culture
Based on the attribution theory of Weiner, Frieze, Kukla,
Reed, and Rosenbaum (1972), service failure can be framed
following three dimensions of causality locus (whether the
cause is internal or external to the service provider); stabil-
ity (whether the failure is perceived as temporary or per-
manent); and controllability (whether or not the
wrongdoing is under the control of the service provider
or not).
Whether the NCI is attributed internally or externally
strongly impacts the nature and the intensity of experi-
enced emotions. (Chebat & Filiatrault, 1993; Taylor, 1994;
Taylor, 1995; Folkes, 1984; Folkes, Koletsky, & Graham,
1987; Krishnan & Valle, 1979; Richins, 1983a; Richins,
1983b; Richins, 1987, 1993; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985;
Snellman & Vihtkari, 2003; Weiner, 1985; Wong & Weiner,
1981).
This is consistent with the Cognition–Affect–Behavior
(CAB) model developed by Lazarus (1991), where emotions
are conceived as an affective response following a mental
assessment of the event and a judgment of its accountabil-
ity (called primary and secondary appraisals). This leads us
to our first hypothesis:
H1a: When attributed to the service firm (as compared to
factors not controlled by the firm), NCIs give arise to
more negative emotions.
Culture may moderate this relationship as it affects
the evaluation of the magnitude of the problem as well
as the range of the emotional verbal and non-verbal
responses (EkmanPlease provide initial for the author
‘Ekman’ in Reference ‘Ekman (1972)’., 1972). For instance,
compared to individualistic consumers, collectivists tend
to attribute NCI to factors that are not controllable by
the service provider, such as a bad luck (Hui & Kevin,
2001). They also display more anger when the wrong-
doer (e.g. a service provider) does not belong to their
endogroup (Matsumoto, Kudoh, Scherer, & Wallbott,
1988).
The attribution process performed by collectivists can be
explained by the fact that they are relatively ineffective in
their encounters with foreigners (Gabrenya & Barba,
1987), and consequently feel less cooperative with them
(Espinoza & Garza, 1985). Another explanation is that,
collectivist consumers who were raised in less developed
countries (Hofstede 1980; Triandis, 1988; Watkins &
Raymond, 1996, etc.) expect less quality from their service
providers. Consequently, when facing a NCI, collectivist
consumers would attribute failure to a factor that the ser-
vice provider cannot control. Following CAB, they would
then experience less negative emotions. This leads us to
H1b:
H1b: Externally attributed NCIs give arise to less negative
emotions for collectivist consumers than for individual-
istic ones.
2.2. Felt vs. expressed emotions and culture
Felt emotions may be discrepant from expressed ones
and vice versa (Bagozzi, Gopinath, & Nyer, 1999; Hochs-
child, 1983). Emotions felt following a NCI have been
extensively studied (Menon & Dubé, 2000; Smith, 2002).
As proposed in the CAB model, negative emotions such as
anger and disgust mediate the relationship between the
cognitive appraisal of the incident and dissatisfaction
behaviors (Bolfing, 1989; Godwin, Patterson, & Johnson,
 J.-C. Chebat et al. / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 37–44
1995; Westbrook, 1987) namely complaining to the service
provider or to a third party, negative word-of-mouth and
exit (Chebat, Davidow, & Codjovi, 2005; Folkes et al.,
1987). We then propose three hypotheses H2a, H2b and H2c:
H2a: The stronger the negative emotions are, the more
likely the complaint behavior will be.
H2b: The stronger the negative emotion ares, the more
likely the negative word-of-mouth and the exit behavior
will be.
H2c: The stronger the negative emotions are, the more
likely the complaint to a third party will be.
Complaining and negative word-of-mouth are voice
behaviors that are more likely to occur in more developed
countries, where service providers are numerous and com-
petition is high which gives a large range of choice to cus-
tomers. Accordingly voice behaviors is related to the level
of economic development in a given society (Fornell & Di-
dow, 1980).
Moreover the level of economic development may be a
proxy that helps in distinguishing between individualistic
and collectivistic societies: the more economically devel-
oped a country is, the more individualistic its culture. (Hof-
stede, 1980; Triandis, 1988).
Further, collectivistic consumers are likely to develop
stronger social bonds with members of their society; such
bonds have to be preserved within a harmonious social
environment. Consequently, even if collectivist consumers
feel frustrated after a dissatisfying service, they will be less
likely to express their feelings to the firm than their indi-
vidualistic counterparts, but they are more likely to leave
it. This leads to H2d, H2e and H2f:
H2d: Negative emotions affect less collectivist consumers’
complaining behavior than individualistic consumers.
H2e: Negative emotions affect more collectivist consum-
ers’ negative word-of-mouth than individualistic
consumers.
H2f: Negative emotions affect less collectivist consum-
ers’ complaints to a third party than individualistic
consumers.
These behaviors are likely to be moderated by the per-
ception of the service provider’s group membership:
whether it belongs to the same social group of the dissatis-
fied customer or not. This point is discussed in depth in the
next section.
2.3. Endo vs. exogroup and felt receptivity
If consumers perceive the service provider as belong-
ing to the same group as themselves (i.e., the endogroup),
service providers are expected to be more receptive to
the customers’ needs and to be more willing to redress
a service failure; this is the case especially in collectivis-
tic cultures. However if the service provider is perceived
as not belonging to the endogroup (i.e., the exogroup),
dissatisfied customers will expect that service provider
is less willing to redress the situation. From this H3a
flows:
39
H3a: The more the service provider is perceived by the
customer as a member of the endogroup, the more the
customer expects a greater receptivity regarding a
redress of the service failure.
We expect the relationship of H3a to be moderated by
culture. Collectivist people grant more weight to relation-
ship with endogroup members than individualistic coun-
terpart. They also rely less on members of exogroups
(Chen & Starosta, 1998; Triandis, 1994). Moreover, coop-
eration within collectivist groups is more intense than
within individualistic groups (Sinha 1982; Triandis
1988). This can be explained by the fact that compared
with individualists, collectivists focus more on social rela-
tionships than on the task (Nibler & Harris, 2003). This
leads to H3b:
H3b: Compared to individualistic consumers, collectivist
consumers expect more receptivity from an employee
they regard as member of their endogroup.
Perceived receptivity is likely to affect consumers’
behavior. If firms are reputed to be receptive to complaints,
consumers have been shown to complain more (Day & Lan-
don, 1977; Granbois, Summers, & Frazier, 1977; Richins,
1983a; Richins, 1983b; Richins, 1987; Singh, 1990a). In this
light, we posit that the more likely consumers complain to
the service firm, the less likely they complain to a third
party. That is the essence of H4a, H4b and H4c:
H4a: The more receptivity customers expect from the
employee, the more likely they complain directly to
the service providers.
H4b: The more receptivity customers expect from the
employee, the less likely they use the word-of-mouth.
H4c: The more receptivity customers expect from the
employee, the less likely they complain to a third party.
The extant literature leads us to expect these relation-
ships to be moderated by culture. However, the direction
of the moderating effects is not clear. Indeed some
researchers argue that collectivist consumers look for sta-
ble, harmonious and cohesive relationships within endo-
groups, whereas individualists search for autonomy,
pleasure and accomplishment (Loo & Jolibert, 2001; Ro-
nen & Shenkar, 1985; Westwood, Tang, & Kirkbride,
1992).
Whereas for other researchers (Richins & Verhage, 1985)
collectivist consumers who are dissatisfied with the ser-
vice, tend to complain more to service providers of the
endogroup because they expect more receptivity from
them. Our hypothesis is phrased in a way that supports
the second type of studies. This leads us to H4d
H4d: Compared to individualistic consumers, the more
collectivist consumers perceive an employee as recep-
tive, the more likely they complain to the employee.
In collectivist societies, people entertain tied relation-
ships with their social environment. Consequently, they
are more likely to convey their feelings to their friends
and relatives. This allows dissatisfied customers to free
40 J.-C. Chebat et al. / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 37–44
themselves from their negative feelings without engaging
in confrontational behaviors with endogroup service pro-
viders. In contrasts, individualistic consumers pay less
attention to such psychological cost to complain to service
providers regardless their group affiliation whether they
belong to the endogroup or the exogroup. We posit that
they are less prone to negative word-of-mouth. This is
the essence of H4e:
H4e: Compared with individualistic consumers, collec-
tivist consumers are more prone to spread negative
word-of-mouth following an NCI.
3. Research model
Our model directly derives from Cognition–Affect–
Behavior (see Fig. 1).
As already, pointed out the extant literature is far from
convergent. Our model tests two rival processes that we
identified when reviewing the literature:
3.1. First process
Compared to individualists, collectivistic consumers feel
less negative emotions following a critical incident, which
urges them to voice their dissatisfaction less likely to the
service provider or a third party.
3.2. Second process
In contrast with individualists, collectivists consider
employees as more receptive and are more prone to voice
their complaints.
These two competing processes will be tested against
each other.
H1b
Attribution
H1a
Individualism/collectivism
H3a
Perceived
Belongingness
H3b
Fig. 1. Culture and dissatisfaction behaviors.
4. Method
4.1. The service sector of the study
We identified fast-food restaurants as an appropriate
service setting to conduct our research. Fast-food service
industry is a sector where NCI are frequent. The study takes
place in a cosmopolitan city of the Eastern part of North
America where many ethnic restaurants are established.
In addition, customers may encounter employees from
both their endogroup or from exogroups. The respondents
are students of two major universities of this city. Students
are frequent users of such services, which reduces the var-
iance of a certain number of sociodemographic variables
(e.g. age, education and income, etc.).
4.2. Sample
Three hundred students were recruited from two uni-
versities located at a major city of the Eastern part of North
America. They originate from 39 countries: 121 North
Americans, 27 South Americans, 32 West-Europeans, 9
East-Europeans, 45 Asians, 44 North-Africans and 14 Mid-
dle Easterners. All of them have experienced a NCI in the
last 12 months.
4.3. Measures
Collectivism/individualism measure was adapted from
Yoo and Donthu works (e.g. Donthu & Yoo, 1998; Yoo &
Donthu, 2001) that derived six items from the original scale
developed by Hofstede (1989).
Attribution is measured with Russel’s scale (1982), made
of three dimensions: locus of causality (who is responsible
for the NCI?), stability (is the NCI frequent with this firm?),
controllability (is the incident under the control of the
firm?). This measure is composed of nine items.
H2d, e, f
Negative
Emotions
H2a, b, c
Dissatisfaction behaviors
Voice Behaviors
Private Behaviors
Third Party behaviors
Perceived H4a, b, c
Receptivity
H4d, e, f
 J.-C. Chebat et al. / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 37–44 41

Emotions were measured with Izard’s scale (1977); it 4.4. Statistical analysis
was shown by Eroglu and Machleit (2000) to be the most
appropriate to measure negative emotions. This scale is A series of factor analyses showed that all scales had the
made of eight items. expected dimensions. The range of alphas varies between
Social perception scale (endogroup vs. exogroup) was .63 and .94.
developed for the specific purpose of the present study,
based on interviews with researchers from psychology
and social psychology fields and on the extant literature. 5. Results
Its Cronbach alpha is .87.
Socio communicative style (SCS) designed by Richmond Table 1 summarizes the findings of the regression anal-
and McCroskey (1990) this scale measures the construct yses used to test the hypotheses.
of receptivity. The reported Cronbach alpha is .80 however
in our study it is .96.
6. Discussion
Singh’s (1988, 1990a, 1990b) scale is designed to mea-
sure behaviors generated by dissatisfaction. It includes four
factors: voice to the service provider, private behaviors Overall only two hypotheses out of sixteen are not
(negative word-of-mouth and exit), complaining to a third supported and four others are partially supported. Individ-
party and absence of complaints. ualism/collectivism moderates all hypothesized relation-

Table 1
Regression results.

Hypothesis Independent variable Dependent variable Moderating variable = R R F p Beta

individualism/collectivism I/C square
Attribution Anger 0.167 0.028 8.449 0.004 0.167
Anxiety 0.002 0.000 0.001 0.978 0.002
Other emotions 0.230 0.053 15.483 0.000 0.230
H1a Attribution Negative emotions –
Attribution Anger I/C 0.034 0.001 0.349 0.555 0.034
Anxiety 0.129 0.017 4.919 0.027 0.129
Other emotions 0.138 0.019 5.398 0.021 0.138
H1b Attribution Negative emotions I/C
H2a Negative emotions Voice behaviors – 0.213 0.045 4.351 0.005 0.213
H2b Negative emotions Private behaviors – 0.502 0.252 30.863 0.000 0.502
H2c Negative emotions Complaint to third – 0.243 0.059 5.744 0.001 0.243
party
Anger Voice behaviors I/C 0.110 0.012 3.552 0.060 0.110
Anxiety 0.118 0.014 4.080 0.044 0.118
Other emotions 0.094 0.009 2.478 0.117 0.094
H2d Negative emotions Voice behaviors Collectivism
Anger Private behaviors Collectivism 0.284 0.081 25.856 0.000 0.284
Anxiety Private behaviors Collectivism 0.106 0.011 3.275 0.071 0.106
Other emotions Private behaviors I/C 0.384 0.148 48.100 0.000 0.148
H2e Negative emotions Private behaviors I/C
Anger Complaint to third I/C 0.088 0.008 2.320 0.129 0.088
party
Anxiety Complaint to third I/C 0.143 0.020 6.078 0.014 0.143
party
Other emotions Complaint to third I/C 0.180 0.032 9.274 0.003 0.180
party
H2f emotions Complaint to third I/C
party
Hypothesis Independent variable Dependent variable Moderating R F p Beta Conclusion:
variable = I/C square relationship is
H3a Perceived Perceived receptivity – 0.061 19.517 0.000 0.248 Positive
belongingness
H3b Perceived Perceived receptivity I/C 0.078 25.233 0.000 0.279 Positive
belongingness
H4a Perceived receptivity Voice behaviors – 0.019 5.787 0.017 0.139 Positive
H4b Perceived receptivity Voice behaviors – 0.032 9.665 0.002 0.139 Negative
H4c Perceived receptivity Third party – 0.011 3.188 0.075 0.103 N.S.
behaviors
H4d Perceived receptivity Voice behaviors I/C 0.013 3.745 0.054 0.113 Positive
H4e Perceived receptivity Private behaviors I/C 0.017 5.229 0.023 0.132 Significant negative
relationship
H4f Perceived receptivity Third party I/C 0.008 2.247 0.135 0.087 N.S.
behaviors

All emotions have significant effects except anxiety.

Significant only for anxiety.
Significant for all emotions except anger.
42 J.-C. Chebat et al. / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 37–44
ships, except the path between receptivity and third-party
complaints.
All the dimensions of emotions (except anxiety) are af-
fected by attribution. Once individualism/collectivism is
tested as a potential moderator, all the regression coeffi-
cients are reduced, except anger: collectivism reduces the
emotional effects of attribution except those of anger.
Further, negative emotions impact the three types of dis-
satisfaction behavior. Once individualism/collectivism is
tested as a potential moderator (Baron & Kenny, 1986),
two significant effects are observed: first, the effects of
emotions on voice and complaint to a third party are signif-
icantly lower for collectivist than for individualist consum-
ers, second, private responses (i.e., word-of-mouth and
exit) are significantly stronger for collectivist than for indi-
vidualistic consumers.
As expected, we found a strong, positive and significant
relationship between perceived belongingness to the endo-
group and receptivity. (F = 19.517; p = 0.000). The introduc-
tion of individualism/collectivism as a potential moderator
shows that perceived belongingness to endogroup signifi-
cantly affects the receptivity more for collectivist consum-
ers than for individualistic ones.
Receptivity in turn affects significantly (F = 5.787,
p = 0.017) and positively voice (i.e., complaints to the ser-
vice provider). The test of moderating effects of individual-
ism/collectivism on this relationship reveals that for
collectivist consumes receptivity affects less voice than
for individualist, which is the opposite of what was
expected.
Receptivity also affects private behaviors (F = 9.665,
p = 0.002). I/C moderates the relationship: for collectivist
consumers’ receptivity impacts private behaviors less than
for individualistic consumers. However, receptivity does
not affect behavior toward a third party, whatever the I/C
orientation will be.
7. Conclusion
Faced with a negative critical incident, customers seek
for the cause of failure. If the cause is external to the cus-
tomer, negative emotions will arise and trigger behavioral
responses, such as complaining to either a service provider
or a third party, or spreading negative word-of-mouth. This
finding is consistent with the extant literature derived from
Lazarus’s model (Lazarus, 1991; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985;
Folkes et al., 1987; Krishnan & Valle, 1979; ; Richins,
1983,a,b, 1987; Taylor, 1994; Taylor, 1995; Chebat &
Filiatrault, 1993), and the stream of works related to the
behavioral effects of attribution (Bolfing, 1989; Folkes
et al., 1987; Godwin et al., 1995; Westbrook, 1987).
Furthermore, culture plays a key moderating role in
shaping customers behavioral responses to a NCI as sup-
ported by previous studies (e.g. Heung & Lam 2003; Liu
et al., 2001; Zourrig et al., 2009a; Zourrig et al., 2009b).
For instance, collectivism reduces the effects of attribution
on all emotions, except felt anger. This may be explained by
the fact that anger is a universal physiological state that
urges for action towards the wrongdoer (i.e., the service
provider).
The fact that other negative emotions are less experi-
enced with collectivist customers can be explained as fol-
lows: collectivist consumers are more likely to rise in less
developed countries where service failures are usual and
occur frequently (Arndt, Barksdale, & Perreault, 1982;
Donthu & Yoo, 1998; Furrer et al., 2000; Mattila, 1999;
Watkins & Raymond, 1996). Consequently, collectivist con-
sumers complain less to their service providers and third
party than individualistic consumers do. In addition, since
interpersonal harmony is valued by collectivist more than
by individualistic consumers, the former tend to show less
their discontentment directly to the service provider,
which confirms findings in previous works (e.g. Loo &
Jolibert, 2001; Westwood et al., 1992).
However, as individualistic societies, strive freedom and
self-expression values, customers from these cultures tend
to voice the dissatisfaction directly to the service provider
(Chen & Starosta, 1998; Nibler & Harris, 1994; Triandis
1988; Triandis 1994).
Moreover, the present study shows that negative word-
of-mouth is more frequent with collectivist consumers. In-
deed dissatisfied customers vent their negative feelings to
people who are not involved in the incident for at least
two reasons: to not spoil the relationship with the service
provider and to let their network of friends and relatives
learn from their experience. This fact particularly true, in
collectivist societies, where the relationship network is
likely to be tighter which increases the spread of negative
word-of-mouth.
Likewise, collectivist consumers tend to exit more often
after negative incidents rather than complaining because
they do not want to spoil the relationship with the service
provider especially if it belongs to the endogroup. Instead
these customers express their dissatisfaction and anger
by deserting the service provider, this behavior is all the
likelier in the fast-food industry where switching costs
are null. In other words collectivist consumers are reluctant
to jeopardize the good relationships within their group.
Harmonious relationships with service providers seem to
be more weighing than service efficacy.
Overall, our study sheds some light on two rival pro-
cesses explaining behavioral responses of dissatisfied cus-
tomers with different cultural background.
7.1. Process 1
Even if collectivist consumers blame the service employ-
ee as much as the individualist consumers, they feel less
negative emotions and show less complaining behaviors
and less voicing to a third party than individualists do.
7.2. Process 2
Even if collectivist consumers, who consider employees
as members of their endogroup, expect more receptivity,
they also want to maintain harmonious relationships with
such employees and then restrain from complaining. The
least costly way of expressing their discontentment is to
exit the service firm.
The two processes lead to convergent effects. First, col-
lectivists voice their dissatisfaction less than individualistic
consumers. Second, they vent their dissatisfaction through
negative word-of-mouth and exit.
 J.-C. Chebat et al. / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 37–44
8. Managerial implications
The fact that collectivist consumers tend to complain
less to their service providers, makes firms based in estab-
lished in collectivist societies unwilling to get a feed-back
from their dissatisfied customers. This issue is somewhat
challenging for managers because it may hinder their ef-
forts of service recovery to redress weaknesses.
As collectivist customers are likely to be silent and less
willing to direct their dissatisfaction outwardly toward
the service provider, marketers need to detect early pat-
terns of dissatisfaction with these customers.
For instance employees have first to recognize their mis-
takes. This is an important point because it helps establish-
ing the trust following a service failure. This will be a major
way to transform a dissatisfied service experience into real
opportunity to reinforce a weakened relationship and fos-
ter forgiveness (Zourrig et al., 2009b).
In individualistic societies, as suggested by Rust et al.
(1995), dissatisfied consumers should be encouraged to
complain. The reason is that ‘‘if a customer is unhappy
but doesn’t complain, then the company risks losing that
customer, along with that customer’s future profit stream”
(p. 181).
Overall, service firms should train front line employees
to identify consumers who fail to voice their dissatisfaction
and should encourage them to do so. For instance, firms
should foster customers to voice their dissatisfaction by
rewarding complaining and advertising that ‘‘Complaint is
a Gift!” In doing so service firms signal to their customers
that they welcome complaints.
Likewise, employees should be trained to emotional la-
bor; sales persons have to learn how to accept and manage
negative messages from dissatisfied customers with differ-
ent cultural background.
Moreover employees should have a proactive attitude
toward complaining and ask their customers what may
go wrong in the delivered service.
Further, as successful service recovery depends on the
time it takes customers to get it, employees should be
empowered to give complaining customers a quick
response.
Acknowledgement
The author gratefully acknowledges a research grant
received from the Social Science Research Council of
Canada, which made this research possible.
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