While the proliferation of literature on the subject of growing incivility in society demonstrates the increasing importance given to civility by corporate America, there has been little academic investigation of the concept. The limited number of academic studies on civility reveals immense negative consequences for uncivil behavior. One question for marketers of businesses is whether lack of civility among front-end personnel can negatively influence sales. This dissertation is an attempt to fill this research gap by exploring responses to uncivil behavior under the theoretical framework of attribution theory. Using the CDSII scale based on attribution theory, experimental research design was used with current civil and uncivil behavior by the store employees and past experiences (positive, negative, and no-experience) with the store as stimulus. The consumers' perception of civility, attributions and behavioral intentions were measured and used as dependent variables. The results of the experiment showed that when a customer discerns employee behavior to be uncivil, the customer's perception of the level of the ability of the employee to control his own behavior decreases. The results of the study enhance the knowledge of two important consumer behaviors, namely complaining and switching behaviors by empirically studying their antecedents in a particular market interaction context. The results imply that it is important to eliminate or minimize any experience that the customer may construe as negative at a store. If practitioners can work towards eliminating or decreasing certain attributions of consumers, they can reduce the switching behaviors and thus impact customer retention rates and future sales. Though this study contributes to marketing theory and provides vital insights to practitioners, this study is but a starting point for further examination of the role of civility in consumer behavior and decision making.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:48:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3 166815.pdf.jpg: 22231 bytes, checksum: 05dc610aedf210f4be6b23efe4fbe2f1 (MD5) 166815.pdf: 1470969 bytes, checksum: bd39991c397493712240206a46d81b74 (MD5) 166815.pdf.txt: 498847 bytes, checksum: cc7765645aad075debcf0b507bfee522 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-02-02T00:00:00Z / Esta tese tem como tema central o valor para o cliente, e como finalidade principal explorar a relação entre valor e comportamentos de reclamação e de boca a boca. O trabalho justificou-se pela necessidade de uma análise conjunta dos três temas, como forma de viabilizar uma melhor compreensão destes temas como elementos relevantes do paradigma de marketing de relacionamento. Foi desenvolvida uma revisão da literatura sobre cada um dos temas, com maior extensão sobre o valor para o cliente. Em cada um destes foram apontados: uma visão geral dos temas; a discussão conceitual e a relevância teórica e prática de cada assunto; os principais desafios para pesquisa; aspectos relacionados à mensuração; e os desenvolvimentos dos temas no contexto brasileiro. Foi elaborado a partir desta revisão um total de cinco proposições, que geraram dois modelos estruturais aos quais foram agregadas as proposições conceituais associadas aos construtos de benefício e de sacrifício como dimensões de valor para o cliente. Para avaliar os dois modelos, decidiu-se proceder a um levantamento de dados, por meio de um questionário estruturado, junto a estudantes de cursos de pós-graduação lato sensu da área de gestão, na cidade de Fortaleza. Foram coletados 261 questionários, dos quais 248 foram utilizados nas análises. Os modelos foram avaliados a partir da técnica de Modelagem de Equações Estruturais, tendo-se destacado os seguintes resultados: com relação à reclamação, identificou-se que, quanto mais os clientes percebem valor nos serviços, mais se tornam predispostos a reclamar, e mais efetivamente reclamam; quanto ao comportamento de boca a boca, verificou-se que quanto mais valor os clientes percebem, mais são predispostos a tais comunicações, e efetivamente falam mais intensamente e mais favoravelmente. Adicionalmente, foram identificadas algumas dificuldades com as proposições conceituais, e com os antecedentes do valor. Com base nos resultados, são apontadas algumas recomendações para outras pesquisas envolvendo os temas em questão, como forma de superar as limitações identificadas, e de avaliar os problemas identificados em cada um dos temas. / This dissertation has the customer value as the main subject, and the main purpose was to analyze the relationship of value with complaining and word-of-mouth behaviors. The research is justified for the necessity of a scientific analysis putting the three subjects together, in order to make possible a better comprehension of them as elements of the marketing relationship paradigm. This way, it was done a research on the academic literature of each subject, more extensively on customer value. For each subject, it was appointed: an overall analysis; a discussion about the concepts and the theoretical and practical relevance; the main challenges for academic research; aspects of measurement; and the development of researches on the subject in the Brazilian context. From the literature evaluation, five propositions were developed, what generated two different structural models. Conceptual propositions related to the benefits and sacrifices dimensions related to customer value concept were also put in the models. In order to evaluate the two models, a questionnaire was prepared, and the data collected with students of management lato sensu post graduate courses from Fortaleza. A total of 261 questionnaires were collected, and 248 were used in the analysis. Structural Equation Modeling were used to evaluate the models, and the main results were: related to complaining behavior, it was identified that value perceived influences positively the complaining intention, and the action of complaining; related to word-of-mouth, it was identified that value perceived influences positively the word-of-mouth intention, and also the behavior intensity and favorability. In addition, some difficulties were found relating the value conceptual propositions, both with the benefits and the sacrifices dimensions. From the results, some research recommendations involving the subjects were suggested, as a way to solve the limitations of this research, and to evaluate the problems identified in each one of the subjects.