Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate that online complainants' reactions to a company's service recovery attempts (webcare) can significantly vary across two different types of dissatisfied customers ("vindictives" vs "constructives"), who have dramatically diverging complaint Goal orientations. Design/methodology/Approach: Online multi-country survey among 812 adult consumers who recently had a dissatisfying brand experience and turned to a marketer-generated social media site to voice an online complaint for achieving their ultimate complaining goals. Scenario-based online experiment for cross-validating the survey findings. Findings: Results suggest that "vindictive complainants" - driven dominantly by brand-adverse motives - are immune to any form of webcare, while "constructive complainants" - interested in restoring the customer-brand relationship - react more sensitively. For the latter, "no-responses" often trigger detrimental brand-related reactions (e.g. unfavorable brand image), whereas "defensive Responses" are likely to stimulate postwebcare negative word-of-mouth. Research limitations/implications: This research identifies the gains and harms of (un-)desired webcare. By doing so, it not only sheds light on the circumstances when marketers have to fear negative effects (e.g. negative word-of-mouth) but also provides insights into the conditions when such effects are unlikely. While the findings of the cross-sectional survey are validated with an online experiment, findings should be interpreted with care as other complaining contexts should be further investigated. Practical implications: Marketers have to expect a serious "backfiring effect" from an unexpected source, namely, consumers who were initially benevolent toward the involved brand but who received an inappropriate response.

Le secteur touristique souffre de plus en plus des départs de clients insatisfaits suite aux dysfonctionnements de services vécus. De nombreux établissements de services, attachent encore, peu d’importance à la gestion des réclamations en raison des moyens financiers qu’elles suscitent. Or, une gestion efficace de la réclamation pourrait transformer un client insatisfait en un client plus confiant et engagé. Notre recherche s’est intéressée à l’identification des critères d’évaluation sur lesquels les réclamants se basent pour juger la gestion de la réclamation, et à l’impact de cette évaluation sur la qualité de la relation établie avec l’établissement touristique. Pour ce faire une étude qualitative exploratoire suivie d’une étude quantitative ont été réalisées.Après avoir examiné la revue de la littérature, nous nous sommes focalisés sur les théories de la justice perçue lors de l’évaluation de la gestion de la réclamation. En outre, nous avons mobilisé les dimensions de la confiance et de l’engagement comme critères de jugement de la qualité relationnelle perçue. Les résultats de notre étude montrent l’existence d’un impact positif et significatif de quelques critères de la justice perçue (jugés par les réclamant comme étant les plus importants) sur la satisfaction post-réclamation et la qualité relationnelle perçue. Ces critères sont essentiellement l’équité du résultat accordé par l’établissement (ex : compensation accordée), l’empathie et la politesse développées par le personnel en contact, et la rapidité du traitement de la réclamation. / The tourist sector is suffering more and more from the departure of the unsatisfied customers after experienced service failures. Several services companies, still attach, few importance to complaint handling because of financial funds needed. However, an efficient complaint handling management could transform a dissatisfied customer to a more confident and committed customer. Our research was interested in the identification of the appraisal criteria on which claimants base to judge complaint handling and the impact of this evaluation on the quality of the relationship established with the tourist establishment. Consequently, a qualitative study followed by a quantitative study has been accomplished. After examining the literature review, we focused on the perceived justice theory to evaluate the complaint handling. Besides, we used trust and commitment dimensions as a criteria of judgment of the perceived relationship quality (Morgan et Hunt, 1994).The outcomes of our study show the existence of a positive significant impact of some criteria of the perceived justice (considered by consumers as the most important), on recovery satisfaction and perceived relationship quality. These criteria are mainly equity of the result provided by the establishment (Ex. Compensation provided), empathy and politeness developed by the front line staff, and the quickness of the complaint treatment.