Complaining at the Store or Through Social Media: The Influence of the Purchase Channel, Satisfaction, and Commitment

In the current omnichannel retail environment, customers have multiple channels to interact with firms to search for information, purchase, and after-sales. Within those channel social media can play a significant role, particularly as complaint channels. The aim of this paper is to analyze whether the choice to complain face-to-face or through social media depends on the purchase channel chosen and the satisfaction and commitment with the retailer. With data from an online panel our results show that the complaint channel tends to be the same as the channel chosen for purchase; moreover, satisfaction is positively related to complaining at store and negatively related to complaining through social media, and commitment is only positively related to complaining through social media.