Customer Reactions to Fellow Customer Misbehavior

Abstract

The paper explores the structure and content of customers' reactions to fellow customer misbehavior following the scale development technology based on open-ended questionnaires. Two formal data investigations are taken after pre-test in Shenyang, with the sample of 203 and 413 consumers for exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis respectively. The results show that: (1) the structure of customers' reactions to fellow customer misbehavior consists of 9 dimensions named as dissuasion, understanding, approval, exit, retaliation, creative suggestion, sympathy for employees, venting and complaints, a total of 26 items; the scale developed has acceptable levels of reliability and validity, which could be the measurement tool for further research; (2) customers are more probable to exit the service enterprises while less possible to retaliate due to fellow customer misbehavior, and some positive reactions also exist with low possibility; (3) differences of customers' reactions to fellow customer misbehavior are statistically significant on demographic variables.