The effects of different levels of customer dissatisfaction on behavioral intentions: An empirical study on airline passengers

Due to the emerging relevance of the service sector and the concept of customer satisfaction, this study was conducted. The main objective of this paper is to understand the relationship of three elements in an airline business – levels of dissatisfaction, behavioral intentions, and perceived customer cost. The respondents of this study are airline passengers who were asked to answer through travel agencies. The model proposed in this paper is that the different levels of dissatisfaction can trigger different extent of behavioral intentions, but that this however, can be intervened by the perceived cost of the behavior. After thorough analysis using spearman’s rank correlation, Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel Test, and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance, the following hypotheses were finally proved: 1. That higher level of dissatisfaction can trigger more behavioral intentions.2. That the five behavioral intentions follow a perceived cost hierarchy in the sequence of NWOM, exit, complaining, reporting to government agencies, and legal action; and that the more costly the BI, the less likely it is to be exhibited.3. That the higher the level of dissatisfaction, the higher the willingness to incur expenses. These three findings point to the recommendation that in an effort to retain customers in a dissatisfying situation, airlines must be able to manage perceived customer cost such that the easiest and least costly to perform is to complain to the company, followed by NWOM, then exit, then reporting to the government and last legal action