The Impact of E-Services Failures and Customer Complaints on Electronic Commerce Customer Relationship Management

Abstract

Handling customer complaints has become a strategic concern in electronic commerce Customer Relationship Management (e-CRM). The purposes of this study are to (a) explore the major causes of customer complaints, comparing online and in-store environments, and (b) examine how customer complaints are differently perceived based on the types of service failures. The Justice Dimensions with Complaint Handling framework proposed by Tax, Brown, and Chandrashekaran (1998) are applied in this study for the classification of e-service failure types. The data were collected from online customer feedback publicized on Internet websites and the shopping log data reported by selected consumer panels. The research identified that the impact of service failure with the justice dimension affects customers' propensity to complain in the online shopping environment. Further, the study emphasizes that successful service management is the core of e-commerce customer relationship management (e-CRM).