An exploratory study of customer responses to complaint Web sites

While the Web is allowing companies to increase their reach, some of their customers are also using the Web as a broad-reaching complaint forum. These complaint Web sites have the potential to reach as many viewers as the companies’ own sites. The current study examines how these sites affect on three outcome variables - future business intentions, negative word-of-mouth intentions, and referral intentions. The results indicate that the perceived credibility of the comments on the complaint site was a major determinant for all three outcomes. Product importance, attractiveness of alternatives, complaint site knowledge level, and company loyalty had impacts on one or more of the outcome variables