Rise and fall of complainants’ desires: The role of pre-failure brand commitment and online service recovery satisfaction

Abstract After service failures, dissatisfied consumers increasingly turn to social media to complain online. This article investigates the key trigger of two basic complaining desires – revenge and reparation – and their evolution during the online recovery process. Findings indicate that pre-failure customer brand commitment has a strong positive impact on both justice-restoration desires. Most importantly and consistent with our hypotheses, the study provides sound empirical evidence that webcare satisfaction acts as an important moderator between diffuse pre-webcare desires and concrete post-webcare retaliatory (e.g., third-party complaining) and reconciliatory (e.g., behavioral loyalty) intentions. This moderation effect, however, depends on dissatisfied customers' interest in maintaining or changing their complaining desires: Amongst other findings, we demonstrate that in some situations webcare satisfaction can stimulate complainants' retaliatory intentions (‘satisfaction becomes vengeance’ effect), while in other situations it leads to increased reconciliatory intentions (‘satisfaction becomes blessing’ effect).