A STUDY OF SHOPPERS' COMPLAINING BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

The understanding of the concept of consumer satisfaction and complaining behaviour has become important with severe retail competition from the increasing number of new shopping malls. The effects of dissatisfaction lead consumers to engage in various complaining behaviour such as complaining directly to management, exiting, and negative word-of-mouth activities which are detrimental to the mall image and profitability. This study seeks to examine the effects of shoppers’ dissatisfaction and shoppers’ complaining behaviour.

Firstly, factor analysis was carried out to identify factors of mall attributes important in influencing consumer satisfaction of shopping malls. Six mall factors were found to affect retail satisfaction, namely “Tenant Mix Factors”, “Value-Added Features”, “Physical Factors”, “Mall Services”, “Ambience Factors”, and “Social Factors”.

Secondly, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out to examine the relationship between consumer satisfaction to the different genders and age group. The results show that is no significant difference between genders for all mall attributes. In contrast, it was found that there is a significant difference between the mean satisfaction of the mall attributes and the various age groups.

The results of the study further revealed that dissatisfied shoppers are likely not to patronise the mall than to spread negative remarks of the malls.

The results of this study provide useful insight on consumer satisfaction and post-purchase behaviour. Mall managers can make use of these findings to improve their existing customer feedback systems and marketing strategies to attract more shoppers.