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.

Abstract Title:             Banks’ Counteractions against Customers’ Online Criticism Date:             June 5, 2012 Institution:   School of sustainable development of society and technology, Mälardalen University Level:           Bachelor thesis in business administration, 15 ECTS Authors:       Sara Pierre and Johanna Russo                Tutor:           Carl G. Thunman Keywords:   Banks, social media, dissatisfaction, complaints, customer behavior, sCRM, and e-WOM Purpose:       The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze how, where and why customers criticize the banking sector through online platforms, how the banks choose to defend themselves and counter this criticism, and to what extent these complaints may proliferate if not dealt with. The thesis will result in recommendations and suggestions for complaint management. Method:       In order for the thesis to capture the entire environment of online complaints, it has been conducted both from the banks’ and the customers’ perspective. Gathered information and cases as well as two interviews have been used for fulfilling the purpose of the thesis. Once studied, these sources have been analyzed and finally, conclusions and recommendations have been made based on the analysis. Conclusions:   Customer electronic word-of-mouth is publicly displayed on the most commonly used social platforms. In order to avoid unnecessary proliferation of customer complaints, companies ought to implement social customer relationship management strategies aimed towards fulfilling customer needs as well as company objectives. Complaints spread through social media can easily spiral out of hand as a result of the enormous amount of worldwide Internet users that can access the information, and for this reason, banks need to counter these complaints before they become unmanageable.