Who gets to decide your complaint intentions? The influence of other companions on reaction to service failures

This study aims to examine the impact of others companion on complaint intentions when encountering service failure to fill in the gap of insufficient research on the effect of the presence of others companion on consumer complaint behavior (CCB) in the literature of service failure through four scenario experiments. The results of study 1, 2 and 4 support our basic hypothesis that customers who encounter service failures will have higher complaint intentions when they are with others than when alone. The findings study 2, 3 and 4 suggest that the level of intimacy between two individuals acts as a partial mediator of their complaint intentions. People with closer relationships, such as in-group members or of the same sex, have higher complaint intentions than those who are less close. Furthermore, study 4 showed that consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence represents the normative influence that companions provide, which leads to higher complaint intentions when eating with friends than with family.