The Fellow Customers’ Engagement Behaviors in SEPs

This chapter aims to advance the service management literature by further illuminating the relationships between focal customers’ online complaints following service failures and fellow customers’ engagement behavior (CEB). Using data from 39 cases of customers complaining about Tuniu (a leading online travel agency in China) on Weibo (China’s largest microblogging site), this chapter examines how distinct attributes of complaints and firm responsiveness relate to fellow CEB. The results show that non-frustration status of the focal customer is a necessary condition—in other words, a prerequisite—for high fellow CEB. The results also show that fellow customers are more likely to engage with focal customers when they receive more cognitive information from them rather than emotional descriptions. In addition, we find that fellow customers are more sensitive to firm responsiveness. This study provides a framework for service managers for participating in and managing online complaints.