Customer Satisfaction

Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237
Customer Rage Episodes: Emotions, Expressions and Behaviors

Janet R. McColl-Kennedy a, , Paul G. Patterson b,1 , Amy K. Smith c,2 , Michael K. Brady d,3
b
UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia School of Marketing, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia c The George Washington University, United States d Department of Marketing, Florida State University, United States
Abstract In this research, we examine customer rage-associated emotions, expressions, and behaviors following service failure. Three independent studies involving 656 respondents and multiple methods are employed to investigate customer rage. Scales for each form of rage emotion, expression, and behavior were developed and used to assess their interrelationships. Results suggest that different forms of customer rage emotions tend to be linked to different types of expressions and behaviors. For example, both Rancorous Rage and Retaliatory Rage emotions tend to increase Verbal expressions (such as raising ones voice, yelling, and making insulting remarks). In contrast, Retaliatory Rage emotion increases Physical expressions (tried to physically harm a service employee, tried to cause damage to property, and threatened to damage property) and Displaced expressions (took anger out on other people nearby, yelled at other people, and took their anger out on other people later on) whereas Rancorous Rage emotion decreases Physical and Displaced expressions. Interestingly, Verbal expressions are linked to passive-aggressive behaviors, such as switching service providers and spreading negative word of mouth while Physical expressions are linked to relatively aggressive behavior, such as a desire for revenge. Implications for scholarly research and retailers are discussed. 2009 New York University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Customer rage emotions; Customer rage expressions; Customer rage behaviors
Introduction A 17-year-old Dunkin Donuts employee was treated for stdegree burns after she was doused with 180-degree coffee by a 57-year-old man who was angry about having to pay sales tax on his purchase (The Boston Globe, November 7, 2006). In Texas, a 39-year-old mechanic was shot in the head by an angry customer following an argument over tyre rims at an auto- and tyre-repair shop (Fort Worth Star Telegram, February 1, 2007). Customer rage episodes are becoming more commonplace and service settings appear most at risk for these outbursts (Grove, Fisk, and John 2004). Consistent with Shaver et al.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 7 3365 6673; fax: +61 7 3365 6788. E-mail addresses: j.mccoll-kennedy@business.uq.edu.au (J.R. McCollKennedy), p.patterson@unsw.edu.au (P.G. Patterson), aksmith614@gmail.com (A.K. Smith), mbrady@fsu.edu (M.K. Brady). 1 Tel.: +61 2 9385 3385; fax: +61 2 9663 1985. 2 Formerly at The George Washington University, United States. Tel.: +1 727 954 0412. 3 Tel.: +1 850 644 7853.
(1987), we dene customer rage as a form of anger comprised of a spectrum of negative emotions including ferocity, fury, wrath, disgust, contempt, scorn and resentment. When customers experience rage-associated emotions they will tend to express their feelings by physical, verbal, non-verbal and displaced expression (for example, took my anger out later, or on other people), or elect to suppress them through constructive expression (for example, told myself to get over it, told myself to calm down). Furthermore, when customers experience rage-associated emotion they tend to engage in potentially harmful behaviors towards the organization, including exit, negative word of mouth and even revenge. As the opening vignettes attest, customer rage episodes have culminated in the physical assault and even murder of retail employees. Evidence of the rising tide of customer rage episodes was documented in Entrepreneur magazine noting that U.S. customers seem to be getting angrier each year with a 24% increase in the number of complaints led with the Better Business Bureau (Penttila 2005). The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) conducted an online survey in which over 61% of respondents world-wide said the phenomenon of customer rage would inuence their life from their standpoint as an
0022-4359/$ see front matter 2009 New York University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jretai.2009.04.002
J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237
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employer, employee, consumer, and/or citizen (Mallinder 2006). ComPsych Corp., a provider of employee assistance programs, has experienced a 78% increase in recent times in the number of acute-stress counseling sessions it provides to retailers related to customer abuse of store employees (Villagran 2006). Moreover, an article in Information Week discussed how Fortune 500 rms are so concerned about this trend that some are installing software in their call centers with algorithms to detect rising levels of anger in customers voices so that managers can be alerted to intervene to prevent escalation to rage (Chabrow 2005). In fact, The Washington Post reported that sales of emerging technologies in speech analytics and emotion detection currently amount to about U.S. $400 million annually and are growing rapidly (Shin 2006). However, most organizations are ill-equipped to deal with these potentially dangerous situations because little is known about the causes, contexts, and consequences of customer rage episodes, not to mention the most appropriate organizational responses (Grove, Fisk, and John 2004). To gain a fuller understanding, we explore customer rage through a multi-methods, multi-staged study. Considerable attention has been given to the study of customer dissatisfaction associated with low to moderate levels of anger from failed service encounters (e.g., Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault 1990; McColl-Kennedy and Sparks 2003; Smith, Bolton, and Wagner 1999; Tax, Brown, and Chadrashekaran 1998). Research in behavioral psychology and organizational behavior has demonstrated that when individuals experience anger they exhibit a tendency to attack the target verbally and/or non-verbally (Deffenbacher et al. 2002; Fitness 2000). Bechwati and Morrin (2003) found that enraged customers, in their desire for vengeance, are willing to choose rival brands at higher prices in order to get even with rms that have wronged them. Anger in customers has consistently been shown to result in nonconfrontational behaviors, such as exiting, boycotting, negative word of mouth, and complaints to third parties, all of which have a negative impact on the organization (DeWitt and Brady 2003; Keaveney 1995; Smith and Bolton 1998; Stephens and Gwinner 1998). But extreme anger can lead to more overt behaviors that may result in damage to the organizations property and/or emotional and physical harm to persons, including frontline employees, other customers, and even the customers themselves (Fullerton and Punj 1993; Harris and Reynolds 2003, 2004). While anger is one of the most commonly experienced negative emotions in service encounters, customer rage has been neglected by consumer behavior and services marketing researchers. Therefore, this study begins to address this gap by: (1) identifying and dening the nature of customer rage-associated emotions, expressions, and behaviors triggered by service failure; (2) validating scales for rage emotions, expressions and behaviors; and (3) examining relationships between different types of customer rage-associated emotions and accompanying expressions and behaviors. Our study contributes in four important ways. First, as the only empirical study of customer rage episodes, we offer insight into how customers experience rage-associated emotions as a result of service failure. Second, we identify the spectrum of consumer expressions and behaviors that follow
a rage episode. Third, we validate measurement scales for customer rage emotions (CRE), expressions (CRX), and behaviors (CRB) following a service failure across three separate samples. Evidence is provided on the factor structure, dimensionality, scale reliability, and validity for each of the scales, thus preparing the groundwork for subsequent studies. Finally, we identify relationships between the different forms of rage emotions and accompanying expressions and customer behaviors. Conceptual development Despite substantial press on customer rage discussed earlier, other than Grove, Fisk, and Johns (2004) conceptual article describing the phenomenon and Arizona State Universitys work in the National Customer Rage Survey, the topic has received little attention from academia. Given its infancy, we draw on Affective Events Theory (AET) (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996), which incorporates the theory of psychological stress and coping (sometimes referred to as cognitive appraisal theory) (Lazarus and Folkman 1984). Fundamentally, AET argues that individuals react to negative events through a two stage process that leads to coping behaviors (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996). In accord with Lazarus and Folkman (1984), AET argues that individuals make initial appraisals that elicit discrete emotional responses. The valence of the emotional response is tied to whether the encounter is likely to be harmful to ones self, such as when it is relevant to wellbeing. For example, studies in marketing and social psychology indicate that threats to or violations of ones self-esteem (Kuppens and Van Mechelen 2007; Schneider and Bowen 1995), feelings of being cornered, helpless, out of control (Renshaw 2002), unfairness or inequity (Tyler 1994; Schneider and Bowen 1999), and threats to loved ones all have implications for wellbeing and thus represent fertile ground for extreme negative emotions. The emotional reaction then gives way to coping, which refers to efforts that individuals employ to master, tolerate or minimize a stressful situation (Folkman and Lazarus 1980). Coping has two widely recognized functions: managing stressful emotions and their consequences (emotion-focused coping) and altering the troubled person-environment relation that is the cause of the distress (problem-focused coping). Typical coping behaviors range from covert acts like distancing, escape-avoidance and self-restraint to overt, negative acts like confrontation. Consistent with AET and the theory of stress and coping, we expect that some customers will express rage-associated emotions through overt acts like verbal and/or physical aggression (e.g., yelling, threatening and making physical contact) whereas others will express rage though more clandestine means such as non-verbal communication (e.g., glaring, dirty looks, rolled eyes and shook head), displaced anger (e.g., take it out on others around them) or suppressed anger (e.g., try to calm down or get over it). Finally, we expect that after a rage incident, customers will actively engage in various forms of organization-directed coping behaviors that may include complaining, spreading negative word of mouth, exiting, or even seeking revenge. While this conceptualization is anchored in AET, we examine other literature related to stressful events in service encoun-
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ters that add to our understanding of the three key elements of customer rage episodesthe spectrum of rage-associated emotions, forms of expression of these rage emotions, and subsequent organization-directed behaviors. The research reported in the remainder of this paper involves (1) identifying and dening the nature of customer rage-associated emotions, expressions, and behaviors triggered by service failure; (2) validating scales for rage emotions, expressions and behaviors; and (3) examining relationships between different types of customer rage emotions and accompanying expressions and behaviors. Rage-associated emotions A review of the literature reveals that most empirical research on anger emotions, including anger antecedents, expressions, and behaviors, has been conducted in the areas of clinical and social psychology and organizational behavior and has taken an individualistic cultural perspective centering on ego-focused emotions (Markus and Kitayama 1994). The primary focus has been on anger episodes related to the workplace (i.e., supervisors, co-workers), interpersonal or domestic relationships, driving, and other everyday situations that are unrelated to customer service. For example, Grandey et al. (2004) and Rupp and Spencer (2006) explore the effects of customer aggression and unfairness on call center employees but focus solely on the impact on the workers. Other researchers have begun to explore dysfunctional or deviant customer behaviors, which include certain aberrant, abusive, or retaliatory behaviors that may be spawned by anger emotions (Fullerton and Punj 1993, 2004; Huefner et al. 2002). However, these studies are necessarily broad-based and cover a wide range of actions by customers that do not involve customer rage (i.e., alcohol-related violence, sexual harassment of employees and property abuse motivated by peer-induced fun-seeking). Marketing researchers are beginning to see the need to gain further understanding of customer anger emotions due to the increasing number of rage episodes (Grove, Fisk, and John 2004) and the associated short- and long-term consequences for the customer, the employees involved, and other customers who may be present during such episodes (Grandey et al. 2004; Harris and Reynolds 2003; Huefner and Hunt 1995, 2000; Huefner et al. 2002; Reynolds and Harris 2006). Although researchers in marketing have begun to explore various types of aberrant, dysfunctional, deviant, or jaycustomer behaviors (e.g., Fullerton and Punj 1993, 2004; Harris and Reynolds 2003, 2004; Rose and Neidermeyer 1999; Reynolds and Harris 2006), no current study exists that examines customer rage or the ways in which it is expressed to rms. Due to the infancy of customer rage research, there seems to be little consensus regarding how to approach the measurement of customer emotions, particularly those related to anger or rage in service encounters. Richins (1997) demonstrated that many commonly used direct measures of emotions (e.g., scales developed by Batra and Holbrook 1990; Edell and Burke 1987; Izzard, 1977; Mehrabian and Russell 1974; Plutchik 1980) are not wellsuited to capture specic consumer emotion states experienced
during consumption. She therefore developed the Consumption Emotions Set (CES) in which customers indicate how much a certain consumption situation made them feel each specic emotion using a verbal response scale. While the CES includes items related to anger (e.g., frustrated, angry and irritated), it does not adequately capture the extreme negative emotions associated with customer rage episodes. Although there are several conceptualizations and measurement scales that encompass anger emotions, Shaver et al.s (1987) work to develop a comprehensive framework of core emotions represents a very thorough and well cited study that partials out different forms of discrete negative emotions. More specically, Shaver et al. (1987) conducted a comprehensive cluster analysis of 135 discrete emotion words, resulting in six basic emotionslove, joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear. Our focus is on the anger category, which contains 29 anger-related words. Of these, rage was found to be the core and central subcategory that consists of 15 words: anger, rage, outrage, fury, wrath, hostility, ferocity, bitterness, hate, loathing, scorn, spite, vengefulness, dislike, and resentment. This category represents a logical launching point for our investigation of rage-associated emotions. Linking rage emotions to expressions Anger in and of itself is not necessarily harmful. Rather, it is the manner in which individuals choose to express their anger (both initially in the rage-producing episode and subsequently in the behaviors that follow the incident) that has the potential to be detrimental, destructive, or even dangerous for the parties involved (Deffenbacher et al. 2001, 2002). These expressions have not been connected to specic emotions to date, although consistent patterns of differences have been demonstrated (Cacioppo et al. 1993). Researchers in social psychology have developed detailed coding schemes that link facial expressions to specic emotions (Ekman 1992) and have used prototypical acoustical proles to map vocal expressions to discrete emotions, including anger (Scherer 1986). Individuals may or may not be able to completely control, regulate, and/or strategically manipulate their expressions of emotions. However, socio-cultural norms tend to govern the type of emotional expressions that are considered acceptable in certain situations. These culturally linked display rules describe different forms of suppressing, de-intensifying, masking, or replacing spontaneous expression (Ekman and Friesen 1969, 1975; Matsumoto et al. 2005). Deffenbacher et al. (2002) developed an anger expression inventory that addresses how people express their anger. Using a 53-item scale, their analysis revealed the following ve distinct forms of anger expression: (1) verbal aggressive expression (e.g., yelling, cursing and name calling), (2) personal physical aggressive expression (e.g., making hostile gestures and inviting physical contact), (3) overt behaviors, (4) displaced aggression (taking anger out on others), and (5) adaptive/constructive expression (calming down, ignoring, thinking positively). Consistent with AET, three key ways of expressing anger have been identied: (1) express outwardly; (2) displace; and
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(3) suppress. While it is clear that various categories of anger expression forms can be identied and measured, there is limited research as to the specic nature of the relationship between anger emotions and anger expressions (Johnson 1990; Lawton and Nutter 2002; Shaver et al. 1987). This study is intended to address this gap by linking rage-associated emotions to expressions and ultimately organization-directed behaviors. Organization-directed rage behaviors Dissatisfaction with service encounters can lead to an array of behaviors that have a negative impact on organizations, including switching behavior, negative word-of-mouth, and formal complaints to third party agencies (Cronin, Brady, and Hult 2000; DeWitt and Brady 2003; Keaveney 1995; Singh 1990; Smith and Bolton 1998). In contrast, rage-associated emotions can result in acute destructive behaviors such as threats, vandalism, planned retaliation, and even physical violence and sabotage (Ambrose, Seabright, and Schminke 2002; Deffenbacher et al. 2002; Harris and Reynolds 2003; Huefner and Hunt 1995, 2000). Customers who experience negative emotions like anger or rage may go to considerable lengths to pay back or get even with organizations that have wronged them (Bechwati and Morrin 2003; Bougie, Pieters and Zelenberg 2003), even when the dollar amount associated with the problem is quite small (Bennett, Hartel, and McColl-Kennedy 2005). Research in consumer behavior provides evidence of reprisals by angry customers against organizations and employees (Fullerton and Punj 2004; Harris and Reynolds 2003, 2004; Huefner et al. 2002). In an extension of Hirschmans (1970) Exit-Voice-Loyalty model, Huefner and Hunt (2000) showed consumer retaliation to be a distinguishable form of dissatisfaction response. While they found voice and exit behaviors, respectively, to be the most common post-hoc organizationdirected responses, they also showed that consumers engage in retaliatory behaviors that are organized into six broad categories: creating cost/loss for the organization, vandalism, trashing, stealing, negative word-of-mouth (with intent to hurt the business), and personal attack. Thus, following customer rage emotions, aggrieved customers may engage in a broad range of behaviors toward the organization that may involve (1) reducing their level of patronage (e.g., exiting, switching, boycotting and lower usage), (2) voicing (e.g., lodging complaints with management or a third party agency), (3) spreading negative word-of-mouth, and/or (4) retaliating (e.g., sabotage, revenge and legal action). The preceding logic forms the basis for our investigation of the emotions, expressions, and behaviors associated with a customer rage episode. Our efforts to measure and test these effects and their interrelations are described next. Pilot study Domain To investigate the nature of customers rage spectrum emotions, expressions, and behaviors, we rst conducted a cross-
sectional empirical study with independent samples of both customers (n = 140) and employees (n = 83) using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) and structured questions. Given that customer rage is relatively under-researched and poorly understood, CIT allows for the exploration, development, and renement of key themes, core concepts, and important relationships (Gremler 2004). Following procedures suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1998) and applied to the study of dysfunctional customer behaviors in service organizations (Harris and Reynolds 2003, 2004; Reynolds and Harris 2006), the qualitative data gathered from the open-ended CIT section of the customer and employee questionnaires was systematically analyzed using open, axial, and selective coding. Codings were conducted independently by one of the authors and two trained graduate research assistants. Customer Sample and Questionnaire Data for the customer pilot study were collected from a convenience sample of 140 undergraduate and graduate student customers. The average age of the respondents was 24.4 years and 52% were female. The most common types of organizations involved in the rage incidents were communications service providers (e.g., telecom/internet), airlines, utilities, retail stores, retail banks, and restaurants. Fifty-ve per cent of respondents reported on an incident that had occurred within the previous six months. Respondents were asked to recall a situation in which they as a customer experienced rage triggered by a failure or action on the part of an organization. Customers were asked a battery of openended questions on details of the rage incident including (1) the situational context (e.g., type of organization, how long ago the incident happened, mode of encounter and length of relationship with organization); (2) the specic circumstances surrounding the incident (what led up to the encounter, exacerbating factors); (3) their thoughts and feelings at certain points in time during and after the encounter; (4) how they expressed their emotions during the encounter; (5) what behaviors toward the organization they exhibited following the rage incident; (6) what specically triggered the feelings of rage; (7) what if any interactions with the organizations employees either contributed to or lessened their feelings of rage; and (8) the duration of the specic emotions they felt. The second section of the questionnaire involved a series of close-ended questions on emotions, expressions, and behaviors, overall evaluations of the service encounter and the organization as well as demographic characteristics. Employee Sample and Questionnaire Data for the employee study were collected from a convenience sample of 83 frontline employees of three of the most commonly cited types of retailers from the customer surveya utility, a retail bank, and a pharmacy chain. The average age of the employee respondents was 32.7 years and 71% of them were female. More than 70% of the respondents were employed with their organization for one year or more with a median length of employment of 22 months. The large majority (86%) chose to
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report on a customer rage incident that occurred at their current employer and most (72%) reported on an incident that happened within the past year. The employees indicated that 62% of the customers involved in the rage incidents were male and about 38% of the customers were perceived to be between the ages of 36 and 45 years old. Similar to the customer sample, employees were asked to recall a situation in which they as an employee were the target of, or were a rst-hand witness to a customer rage incident that was triggered by a failure or action on the part of their organization. A similar set of questions was used as in the customer survey. Because employees would not have direct knowledge of how the customer was feeling during the rage incident or how they behaved toward the organization after the incident, customer rage spectrum emotion and behavior items were not included in the employee questionnaire. Also, since not all forms of rage expressions are outwardly observable by others, only a subset of the expression items used in the customer version of the survey were included. The nal section of the questionnaire included items designed to capture the employees evaluations of their organizations overall handling of the rage incident as well as their demographic characteristics for classication purposes.
The nature of customer rage expressions and behaviors The open-ended questions also probed how customers expressed their rage and behaved toward the organization after the incident. Customers explained how they outwardly expressed their anger non-verbally, verbally, and physically, e.g.,: I stared at the employee, I gave dirty looks, I kept shaking my head, I was rolling my eyes, I got red in the face, I was cursing under my breath, I started using a stern voice which turned into yelling and screaming, I threatened him, I hit the table, I gestured more violently and fumed so much, smoke was probably pouring out of my ears, and I threw my chair down. Other customers described how they suppressed their anger: I was fuming internally, I felt like I wanted to punch the woman but couldnt, I just took a deep breath and left, I had thoughts of pulling him down to the ground and beating him, I just counted to 10 because there was nothing I could do, I wanted to reach out and grab them by the hair and scream in their faces, but I just started crying. In terms of behaviors toward the organization following the rage incident, descriptions included the full range of behaviors including spreading negative word of mouth, writing complaint letters, lodging formal complaints with third parties, exiting, and seeking revenge. Emerging themescritical incidents (employees)
Emerging themescritical incident analysis (customers) The nature of customer rage-associated emotions Coding of individual open-ended questions in the CIT section of the questionnaire identied themes and provided valuable insights into customer rage incidents. Their narratives included statements like I was on re, I exploded, I lost it, I snapped, I was completely red in the face, and This is what made me ip out. Respondents sometimes tried to convey the intensity of their feelings by writing certain words in all capital letters, pressing harder on the paper, and using emphatic punctuation marks (e.g., exclamation points). Immediately after the service failure, customers typically reported feelings of surprise, shock, irritation, anxiety, disappointment, uncertainty, confusion, frustration, and other lower-level anger emotions (e.g., upset, annoyed and agitated). After the organizations response (or lack of response), customers tended to describe themselves as being very angry, outraged, indignant, hostile, furious, and ready to go crazy. The day after the incident, customers reported having feelings of contempt, disgust, scorn, resentment, and very bitter about the whole thing. Most reported that they were still angry the next day and clearly noted their intentions to never patronize the service provider again. While a few respondents reported that their rage dissipated quickly when their problem was resolved, most did not receive an appropriate recovery and therefore continued to feel angry. Surprisingly, many respondents said that although their emotions had lessened, they still have feelings of anger toward the organization or that when they remember the incident, their anger returns. One customer said To this day, the thought of going to that restaurant makes me mad while another put it as, I still hate , and every time I think of it, I hate them a little more. Employee descriptions of rage incidents and specically how customers expressed their anger were vivid. For example, employees repeatedly referred to disruptive, aggressive, hostile, and abusive behaviors by customers that included swearing, yelling, screaming, threatening, name-calling, and physical intimidation. In several incidents, security guards or police had to be called upon to intervene or to forcibly remove the customer from the premises. One employee reported that a customer said he would hurt any employee who came to disconnect the power and that he would be happy to go to jail. A call center employee had an enraged customer tell her that he would be waiting with a knife and some friends for the technician to show up. There were also many reports of customers banging on counters, slamming doors, storming out, hanging up, throwing things at employees, and hitting employees with objects. Item generation and purication Items for the rage emotions, expressions, and behaviors scales were generated from a review of the items used in Shaver et al. (1987) study and our two qualitative studies of critical incidents. Preliminary Customer Rage-Associated Emotions (CRE) Scale Items for the Customer Rage Spectrum Emotions (CRE) Scale were based on Shaver et al. (1987) and checked against the qualitative ndings. We used the fteen rage wordsanger, rage, outrage, fury, wrath, hostility, ferocity, bitterness, hate, loathing, scorn, spite, vengefulness, dislike, and resentment. We also included the three disgust emotion words (disgust, contempt, revulsion), as these words comprised the adjoining anger
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sub category in the Shaver et al. study and because these words were present in the reported critical incidents. Indignation and malice were also included in the CRE scale, based on their presence in the critical incidents reports and because their denitions match the conceptual domain of rage (e.g., indignation is dened as a feeling of righteous anger). As a last step, we conducted an extensive search in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus looking for all possible denitions, synonyms, or related words associated with either the noun form or the adjective form of each of the rage emotion items in our initial CRE scale. No other viable discrete emotion words resulted from this exercise. Therefore, our initial CRE scale consisted of a total of 20 items (anger, rage, outrage, fury, wrath, hostility, ferocity, bitterness, hate, loathing, scorn, spite, vengefulness, dislike, resentment, disgust, contempt, indignation and malice). Since our aim was to try to capture the specic rage spectrum emotions experienced by customers, we included the dictionary denition along with each of the CRE items to help respondents discern between different types of rage-associated feelings. The order of the items was completely randomized. Respondents were asked how much they experienced each of the emotions using a 5-point response scale (anchored by Not At All and Very Much at the end points) in a format similar to Richins (1997) CES items. Preliminary Customer Rage Expression (CRX) Scale Items for the initial CRX Scale were sourced from several studies. First, some items were adapted from the Deffenbacher et al. (2002) Driving Anger Expression Inventory, which is based on forms of driving anger expression across four categories: personal physical aggressive expression; verbal aggressive expression; displaced aggression; adaptive/constructive expression. Some of the remaining 42 items were trimmed because they did not relate to service encounters (e.g., tailgating, speeding up and ashing headlights). Other items were added in order to capture all of the various forms of expression that may be associated with customer rage per se, including several items adapted from the work of Lawton and Nutter (2002), Fujihara et al. (1999), and Renshaw (2002) on anger expression. The nal inventory contained 52 items. This instrument clearly distinguishes between the experience of anger (i.e., state and trait anger) and the expression of anger. The state anger scale assesses the intensity of anger as an emotional state at a particular time whereas the trait anger scale measures how often angry feelings are experienced over time. Deffenbacher et al.s (2002) items are measured on a 4point rating scale (where 1 = almost never and 4 = almost always) according to how often the individual expresses his/her anger in the manner described. Respondents were provided instructions to indicate how often you generally react or behave in the manner described when you are angry or furious while driving. In addition to know if respondents engaged in the various forms of expressions related to a particular incident, we also wanted to try to capture the likelihood that a customer uses a given form of anger expression (using a 5-point scale format). Therefore, we instructed the respondent to indicate how likely they were to engage in a particular form of rage expression. The
5-point scale was used in the subsequent analyses. The order was completely randomized. Preliminary Customer Rage Behavior (CRB) Scale Items for the initial CRB Scale were developed based on a variety of measures used in prior studies of customer intentions and behaviors (Boulding et al. 1993; DeWitt and Brady 2003; Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman 1996), including retaliatory behaviors (Huefner and Hunt 2000; Huefner et al. 2002). CRB items were based on typical customer behaviors that may follow a rage incident such as spreading negative word-of-mouth, refusing to patronize the organization in the future, switching to a competitor, lodging a formal complaint to a third-party agency, taking legal action, and/or seeking revenge. We again instructed respondents to indicate how likely they were to engage in a particular form of rage behavior following a rage incident. The 5-point scale was used in the subsequent analyses. The order of the 24 items was completely randomized in the questionnaire. Pre-testing Due to some of the unique aspects of the preliminary CRE, CRX, and CRB scales as well as the complexity of the customer version of the questionnaire, various forms of pre-testing were conducted prior to administration of the surveys. A primary concern was whether respondents could accurately distinguish among the 20 discrete, yet related, rage-associated emotion words. Therefore, we conducted a focus group with eight graduate students in which we asked them to view a list of the CRE emotion words and then describe the meanings and relationships among these words and to provide anecdotes and examples of when they may have experienced these different emotions during a service failure encounter. Participants were then asked to (independently) devise a categorization scheme for the 20 CRE emotion words and to explain how and why they developed the grouping method. The participants proposed various structures based on the intensity or the extremeness of the emotions, the timing of the emotions (e.g., at the moment of failure versus during/immediately after the failure versus days or weeks after the failure), and the nature of the emotions (e.g., in terms of whether they were more action-oriented and violent versus more internalized and passive). Some of the proposed groupings were quite complex and the participants were readily able to provide examples of situations in which the different emotions would be experienced. Finally, participants were provided with a list of the 20 CRE items that now included dictionary denitions of the rage emotion words. They were then asked whether they felt that their initial denitions, examples, or categorizations would change based on the additional information. The consensus of the group was that the denitions were useful and allowed them to make more rened distinctions about the rage emotion words. Based on the results of the focus group interviews, we were able to determine that customers are able to distinguish among specic, discrete rage-associated emotions but that they can make better distinctions among these emotions when provided with denitional information. Since a primary objective is to iden-
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tify customer rage-associated emotions and to differentiate them from lower level forms of anger emotions (e.g., frustration, irritation and annoyance), we included accompanying denitions for the emotion words. Several variations of the format for the CRX and CRB scales as well as the instructions preceding the scales were developed and tested using small groups of student respondents. Prior to the administration of the surveys, both the customer and employee versions of the questionnaire were also pre-tested using concurrent and retrospective think-aloud interviews (Bolton 1991, 1993; Bolton and Bronkhorst 1990, 1991) as well as traditional pre-test methods. Item purication Items were rst evaluated for each of the three preliminary scales using principal components analysis with oblique rotation. Statistical criteria for item retention were item-to-total correlations above .35 and a factor loading above .50. Items were also considered for clarity and face validity (Bearden, Hardesty, and Rose 2001). Preliminary analysis suggested a three-factor solution with 13 items for CRE. Factor 1 comprised bitterness, hostility, anger and spite (Cronbach alpha = 0.76), factor 2 involved ferocity, malice, vengefulness, rage, wrath, and fury (Cronbach alpha = 0.90), and factor 3 involved indignation, resentment, and outrage (Cronbach alpha = 0.67). For the CRX items, we rst examined customers responses as to how likely they would be in general to use various forms of anger expression during a rage incident. We used the same criteria as we did for the emotion scale. Preliminary analysis suggested a ve-factor solution with 31 items. Moreover, this solution has ve factors that are relatively consistent with the categories of driving anger expression found by Deffenbacher et al. (2002), with the exception of one new category of Non-verbal anger expressions. The ve CRX dimensions are: (1) Physical expression involving specic threats of physical harm or damaging actions against an employee or the organizations property and/or making hostile or threatening physical gestures (Cronbach alpha = 0.90); (2) Verbal expression involving raising the voice or yelling at service employees, making scolding remarks, and engaging in general verbal intimidation of service employees (Cronbach alpha = 0.84); (3) Non-verbal expression involving the use of eye movements and facial expressions (glaring, eye-rolling, scowling) to show anger and/or visibly exiting in anger (e.g., storming out) (Cronbach alpha = 0.87); (4) Displaced expression involving taking the anger out on other people who are not associated with the incident (Cronbach alpha = 0.82); and (5) Constructive expression involving acceptance and the use of self-calming techniques to suppress outward expression of anger (Cronbach alpha = 0.84). Examination of responses showed that over 13% of respondents physically threatened service employees, 3% made actual physical contact with employees in anger, 31% made verbal threats about the organization, more than 38% yelled at service employees, including 15% who swore/cursed at employees, 76% used facial expressions to show that they were internally fuming, approximately 22% admitted to taking their
anger out on other people who were with them, and about 57% said they did things like take deep breaths to try to calm down. In a similar vein, we identied the preliminary scale for CRB, resulting in a four factor, 14-item solution. This initial analysis suggests that there are four types of behaviors in which customers may engage following a rage incident: (1) Exit involving not repatronizing the organization and/or switching to another provider (Cronbach alpha = 0.90); (2) Voice involving making complaints to management or posting complaints about the organization on the Internet (Cronbach alpha = 0.56); (3) Word-of-mouth (WOM) involving making negative comments to others about the organization and/or its employees (Cronbach alpha = 0.68); and (4) Revenge involving thoughts or acts of reprisal and/or sabotage as well as legal action (Cronbach alpha = 0.85). Customers responses as to whether they actually engaged in each individual form of behavior after the rage incident showed that 43% contacted the management of the organization to report the incident, 62% switched to another provider, over 83% spread negative word-of-mouth about the organization, 15% considered legal action against the organization, 11% attempted to sabotage the organization, and almost 7% said they actually took actions to get revenge against the organization or its employees. Scale validation Samples 1 and 2 In order to validate the scales and their structure, we undertook a series of exploratory and conrmatory factor analyses (Bearden, Hardesty, and Rose 2001) on two additional samples of non-student consumers. The samples were obtained through a professional market research company. The online panels of U.S. adult consumers are of sufcient size (sample 1 = 217 respondents and sample 2 = 216 respondents) to achieve a high level of statistical power (McQuitty 2004). The average age of sample 1 was 43.7 years with 50% being female. Eighty-nine percent described an incident that had occurred in the last six months. The most common types of organizations involved in the rage incidents were retail stores, retail banks, restaurants, utilities and airlines. This was also the case for sample 2. The average age of sample 2 was 36 years with 52% female. Ninety-one percent of respondents reported an incident that had occurred in the last six months. Further scale renement Exploratory factor analysis with oblimin rotation was undertaken for the CRE, CRX and CRB scales. As shown in Table 1, the analyses supported a two-factor structure for CRE, a vefactor structure for CRE and a three-factor structure for CRB. Factor loadings were in the acceptable range as were the Cronbach alphas, which ranged from 0.76 to 0.91 (Nunnally and Bernstein 1994). Although a three-factor structure for CRE and a four-factor structure for CRB were considered in the pilot study, closer inspection of sample 1 warranted a two-factor solution for CRE and a three-factor solution for CRB based on higher loadings and reliability estimates. These reduced factor structures
J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237 Table 1 Measurement, reliability, and validity of constructs. Measurement Model Customer Rage EFA EFA loadings Sample 1 Emotions (CRE) Rancorous Rage Retaliatory Rage Expressions (CRX) Verbal Physical Constructive Displaced Non-verbal Behaviors (CRB) Exit Revenge WOM 0.740.85 0.750.91 0.690.80 0.710.89 0.800.84 0.780.84 0.740.84 0.770.92 0.840.87 0.810.92 Sample 2 0.720.78 0.750.86 0.630.84 0.700.88 0.850.87 0.780.90 0.700.89 0.770.89 0.730.84 0.670.80 Cronbach alpha Sample 1 0.82 0.90 0.84 0.87 0.77 0.82 0.83 0.91 0.89 0.78 Sample 2 0.78 0.88 0.84 0.88 0.83 0.85 0.84 0.91 0.80 0.76 CFA CFA loadings Sample 1 0.600.80 0.450.78 0.670.78 0.700.84 0.660.77 0.760.84 0.550.80 0.680.94 0.760.91 0.690.92 Sample 2 0.780.85 0.760.80 0.600.80 0.630.85 0.720.83 0.730.90 0.640.86 0.710.89 0.630.83 0.680.89 Construct reliability Sample 1 0.82 0.90 0.85 0.88 0.77 0.83 0.83 0.91 0.89 0.79 Sample 2 0.78 0.88 0.85 0.89 0.83 0.86 0.85 0.91 0.81 0.77 Average variance extracted Sample 1 0.53 0.65 0.53 0.59 0.53 0.61 0.55 0.68 0.67 0.66 Sample 2 0.49 0.60 0.53 0.61 0.61 0.67 0.58 0.68 0.51 0.63
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Variance explained Emotions (CRE) Expressions (CRX) Behavior (CRB) CFA Goodness-of-t indices Sample 1 Emotions (CRE) Expressions CRX) Behaviors (CRB) Sample 2 Emotions (CRE) Expressions (CRX) Behaviors (CRB) 2 67.67 261.78 112.59 70.78 280.03 96.40 df 26 160 41 26 160 41
Sample 1 68.97% 68.27% 76.42% CFI 0.96 0.95 0.95 0.95 0.94 0.96 IFI 0.96 0.95 0.95 0.95 0.94 0.96 NFI 0.94 0.88 0.93 0.92 0.88 0.93 TLI 0.94 0.94 0.94 0.93 0.93 0.94
Sample 2 65.24% 70.00% 72.64% RMSEA 0.09 0.05 0.09 0.09 0.06 0.08
Note: The exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) and conrmatory factor analyses (CFAa) were conducted on sample 1 (n = 217) and sample 2 (n = 216). The rotation method was oblimin with Kaiser normalization. The analyses supported a two-factor structure for rage emotions, ve-factor structure for rage expressions and three-factor structure for rage behavior. 2 = Chi-square; df = degrees of freedom; CFI = comparative t index; IFI = incremental t index; NFI = normed t index; TLI = TuckerLewis index; RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation.
for CRE and CRB were also supported in the second validation sample (sample 2). Thus, the two-factor solution of Rancorous Rage (disgust, contempt, resentment and scorn) and Retaliatory Rage (ferocity, malice, fury, rage and wrath) and the three factor CRB solution of Exit, Revenge, and WOM was retained for further testing via conrmatory factor analysis (CFA). As shown in Table 1, measurement model t was evaluated using comparative t index (CFI), the TuckerLewis index (TLI), normed t index (NFI), the incremental t index (IFI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). The measurement models resulted in good ts to the data with all CFIs being 0.94 or over (see Table 1). Coefcient alpha estimates for each dimension for samples 1 and 2, respectively, were as follows: 0.82 and 0.78 for Rancorous Rage; 0.90 and 0.88 for Retaliatory Rage; 0.85 and 0.85 for Verbal Rage Expression; 0.88 and 0.89 for Physical Rage Expression; 0.77 and 0.83 for constructive rage expression; 0.83 and 0.86 for Displaced Rage Expression; 0.83 and 0.85 for Non-verbal Rage
Expression; 0.91 and 0.91 for rage behavior (Exit); 0.89 and 0.81 for rage behavior (Revenge); and 0.79 and 0.77 for rage behavior (WOM). Results indicate high levels of convergent and discriminant validity, as all average variances extracted were greater than 0.50, with the exception of Rancorous Rage in Sample 2, which had an AVE of 0.49. Moreover, all average variances extracted exceeded the squared correlations between pairs of factors (Bearden, Hardesty, and Rose 2001; Fornell and Larcker 1981), with the exception of Exit and WOM in Sample 2. Table 2 summarizes the constructs and respective items; intercorrelations for both samples are provided in Appendix A. Relationships between customer rage-associated emotions, expressions and behaviors To gain a preliminary understanding of the structural links between customer rage emotions, expressions and behaviors, we modeled the relationships using structural equation mod-
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Table 2 Final Customer Rage (CRE, CRX, CRB) Scales. Customer Rage Emotions (CRE) Scale Rancorous Rage DISGUST CONTEMPT RESENTMENT SCORN Retaliatory Rage FEROCITY MALICE FURY RAGE WRATH Customer Rage Expressions (CRX) Scale Verbal SWOREALD NEGALD INSULT YELLEMP RAISED Physical PHYCONT PHYHARM PHYTHRT DMGCAUS DMGTHRT Constructive GETOVER ACCPTSIT CALMDWN Displaced TOOKOTHR YELLOTHR TOOKLATE Non-verbal SHOOKHD ROLLEYE DIRTYLK GLARED Customer Rage Behaviors (CRB) Scale Exit NEVERBUS BUSELSE SWITCHED PLDGNOT USELESS Revenge RVGACT RVGCON SABOACT SABOTHO WOM WOMORG WOMEMP
Marked aversion aroused by something highly distasteful Feeling of despising; lack of respect or reverence for something Feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as a wrong insult, or injury Open dislike and disrespect or derision often mixed with indignation; extreme disdain, contempt, or derision Feeling of extreme erceness and unrestrained violence and brutality Desire to see another experience pain, injury, or distress; deep-seated often unexplainable desire to see another suffer Involves an overmastering destructive rage that can verge on madness; intense, disordered, and often destructive rage; feeling of extreme erceness or violence Violent and uncontrolled anger, loss of self-control Desire or intent to revenge or punish; strong vengeful anger or indignation; desire for punishment for an offense
Swore/cursed aloud during my interaction with the service employee(s) Made negative comments about the service employee(s) or organization aloud Made insulting remarks to the service employee(s) Yelled at the service employee(s) Raised my voice at the service employee(s) Made physical contact with a service employee in anger Tried to physically harm a service employee Threatened to do physical harm to the service employee(s) Tried to cause damage to the service organizations property Threatened to damage the service organizations property Told myself to get over it and move on Just tried to accept that there are often frustrating service situations Told myself to calm down Took my anger out on other people who were with me Yelled at other people who were with me Took my anger out on other people later on after the incident Shook my head at the service employee(s) Rolled my eyes at the service employee(s) Gave the service employee(s) dirty looks Glared at the service employee(s)
Never did business with this organization again Took my business elsewhere Switched to another provider for this product/service Pledged to not return to this organization after the incident Have used their products/services less than before Took actions to get revenge on the organization or its employee(s) Considered ways to seek revenge against the organization or its employee(s) Took actions to attempt to sabotage the organization or its employee(s) Thought about ways to sabotage the organization or its employee(s) Made negative comments to others about the organization Made negative comments to others about the organizations employee(s)
eling separately with samples 1 and 2. As shown in Table 3, different rage emotions appear to be linked with different types of expressions and in the majority of cases these relationships tend to hold across the two samples. There appears to be a signicant positive relationship between both forms of Customer Rage Spectrum Emotions (Rancorous and Retaliatory) and Verbal Rage Expression, and a
signicant positive relationship between Rancorous Rage emotions and Non-verbal Rage Expression. We found a signicant negative relationship between Rancorous Rage emotions and Physical Rage Expression. Not surprisingly, in addition to a signicant positive relationship between Retaliatory Rage emotions and Verbal Rage Expression, there is also a signicant positive relationship with Physical Rage Expression and Displaced
J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237 Table 3 Structural model of customer rage emotions (CRE) and customer rage expressions (CRX). Hypotheses Rancorous Rage emotions Verbal Rancorous Rage emotions Physical Rancorous Rage emotions Constructive Rancorous Rage emotions Displaced Rancorous Rage emotions Non-verbal Retaliatory Rage emotions Verbal Retaliatory Rage emotions Physical Retaliatory Rage emotions Constructive Retaliatory Rage emotions Displaced Retaliatory Rage emotions Non-verbal Goodness-of-t indices Sample 1 Sample 2 2 191.34 171.85 Sample 1 Path estimatea 0.27 0.28 0.01 0.08 0.47 0.30 0.65 0.30 0.34 0.03 df 66 66 CFI 0.91 0.92 tb 2.89 2.95 0.09 (n.s.) 0.84 (n.s.) 4.25 3.28 5.38 2.67 3.07 .33 (n.s.) IFI 0.91 0.93 NFI 0.87 0.88 Sample 2 Path estimatea 0.11 0.21 0.09 0.22 0.16 0.44 0.41 0.31 0.45 0.22 TLI 0.88 0.89 tb
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1.39 (n.s) 2.26 1.01(n.s) 2.51 1.74 4.48 3.98 2.97 4.96 2.27 RMSEA 0.09 0.09
Note: CFI = comparative t index; IFI = incremental t index; NFI = normed t index; TLI = TuckerLewis index; RMSEA = root mean square error approximation. a These are standardized loading estimates. b On the basis of one-tailed tests, t values greater than 1.65 were signicant at p < .05, t values greater than 2.33 were signicant at p < .01.
Rage Expression. It is interesting to note that there appears to be a signicant negative relationship between Retaliatory Rage emotions and Constructive Rage Expression. In short, while both forms of rage tend to result in Verbal Rage Expression, Rancorous Rage emotions tend to be associated with Non-verbal Rage Expressions (such as shaking of head, rolling of eyes, and giving dirty looks). In contrast, Retaliatory Rage emotions tend to be associated with Physical Rage Expressions (tried to physically harm a service employee, tried to cause damage to property
and threatened to damage property) and Displaced Rage Expressions (took anger out on other people near by, yelled at other people, took anger out on other people later on). In this sense, Retaliatory Rage appears to lead to more visibly aggressive expressions than Rancorous Rage. As shown in Table 4, overall, Verbal expressions tend to be linked to the more passive-aggressive behaviors, such as exiting and spreading negative word of mouth, while Physical expressions (such as trying to physically harm a service employee,
Table 4 Structural model of customer rage expressions and customer rage behaviors. Hypotheses Sample 1 Path estimatea Verbal expressions Exit Physical expressions Exit Constructive expressions Exit Displaced expressions Exit Non-verbal expressions Exit Verbal expressions WOM Physical expressions WOM Constructive expressions WOM Displaced expressions WOM Non-verbal expressions WOM Verbal expressions Revenge Physical expressions Revenge Constructive expressions Revenge Displaced expressions Revenge Non-verbal expressions Revenge Goodness-of-t indices Sample 1 Sample 2 2 177.20 196.84 0.32 0.17 0.14 0.12 0.01 0.52 0.24 0.01 0.02 0.28 0.19 0.54 0.16 0.04 0.08 df 79 79 CFI 0.94 0.93 tb 2.72 1.64 (n.s.) 1.50 (n.s.) 1.12 (n.s.) 0.11 (n.s.) 4.66 2.59 0.18 (n.s.) 0.15 (n.s.) 2.82 1.79 5.53 1.91 0.40 (n.s.) 0.85 (n.s.) IFI 0.94 0.93 Sample 2 Path estimatea 0.56 0.32 0.44 0.05 0.11 0.63 0.30 0.36 0.05 0.00 0.16 0.51 0.06 0.05 0.05 NFI 0.90 0.89 TLI 0.91 0.89 tb 5.01 4.03 5.03 0.63 (n.s.) 1.10 (n.s.) 4.98 3.53 3.95 0.61 (n.s.) 0.02 (n.s.) 1.41 (n.s.) 5.21 0.68 (n.s.) 0.59 (n.s.) 0.46 (n.s.) RMSEA 0.08 0.08
Note: CFI = comparative t index; IFI = incremental t index; NFI = normed t index; TLI = TuckerLewis index; RMSEA = root mean square error approximation. a These are standardized loading estimates. b On the basis of one-tailed tests, t values greater than 1.65 were signicant at p < .05, t values greater than 2.33 were signicant at p < .01.
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threatening to do physical harm to the service employee, trying to cause damage to the organizations property, threatening to do damage to the organizations property) are linked to the aggressive behavior of seeking revenge. Specically, two forms of expression, Verbal (swore/cursed aloud, made negative comments about the service employee organization aloud, made insulting remarks, yelled at the employee, raised my voice at the employee) and Constructive (told myself to get over it and move on, told myself to calm down) are linked to exiting. Finally, Verbal and Non-verbal (shook my head, rolled my eyes, gave dirty looks and glared at employee) expressions are linked to negative word of mouth. Additional analyses Consistent with AET and our expectation that the impact of rage emotions on behaviors operates through expressions, we conducted mediation tests on several of the more consistent and pragmatic effects from our relationship analyses. Mediation testing was carried out in a manner consistent with Baron and Kennys (1986) approach as applied to structural equation modeling (Maxham and Netemeyer 2002). Results indicate that the effects of Retaliatory Rage emotions on the relatively passive-aggressive behaviors of Exit and Word of mouth were fully mediated by Verbal expressions. Alternatively, the impact of Retaliatory Rage emotions on the more aggressive behavior of Revenge was partially mediated by Physical expressions. Finally, the effect of Rancorous Rage emotions on Word of Mouth was partially mediated by Non-verbal expressions. Taken together, it seems that the aggressiveness associated with a customers expression may dictate the way rage is exhibited to towards the organization. In circumstances where rage is expressed in ways that are not physically threatening, like yelling or non-verbal cues, behaviors tend to be passive-aggressive, such as switching to another service provider or engaging in negative word of mouth communications. By contrast, when rage is expressed in ways that are physically threatening, such as an attempt to damage property or make physical contact with an employee, behaviors tend to be more overt and aggressive, such as actively seeking revenge against the rm. Discussion As the rst attempt to systematically explore customer rage, this multi-methods, multi-phased study provides rich insights into the customer rage phenomenon from both customer and employee perspectives; develops and validates parsimonious measurement scales for CRE, CRX, and CRB; and suggests that different forms of customer rage emotions are associated with different types of customer rage expressions and behaviors. Customer rage emotions spectrum This research shows that customer rage involves a spectrum of discrete, negative emotions that may include feelings such as fury, ferocity, wrath, malice, disgust, contempt, resentment and scorn. Consistent with the theory of stress and coping (cognitive appraisal theory), customers explained that their rage feelings
sometimes escalated throughout the encounter and many were still simmering about the rage incident days, weeks, and even years after the incident and often seemed to re-live the encounter and viscerally re-experience some of the anger associated with the rage episode when asked to recount their experiences. This is consistent with Ray et al. (2008)s nding that anger is maintained when rumination takes place. Furthermore, rage emotions may sometimes be very slow to dissipate and that customers are capable of holding on to their anger for a considerable time after a rage incident. We identify two groups of discrete emotions that represent two forms of rage that we label Rancorous Rage (characterized by intense feelings of ill will or animosity and by acrimonious, malevolent, anger) and Retaliatory Rage (characterized by feelings of erceness, and by destructive, violent anger). The concept of a multi-dimensional spectrum of rage emotions is consistent with the specic emotions approach that focuses on idiosyncratic elements of discrete emotions (see Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999) and with research that shows that certain negative emotions resulting from service failures will impact customers behavioral responses differently (Bougie, Pieters, and Zeelenberg 2003; Zeelenberg and Pieters 2004). For example, Retaliatory Rage is characterized by ferocity, wrath, fury, malice and may be relatively short lived, but the other form of rage, Rancorous Rage (scorn, resentment, disgust and contempt toward the organization) tends to linger after the encounter was over. Based on the detailed descriptions of rage incidents provided by both customers and employees in the pilot study, it is clear that these episodes are common, vividly memorable, and frequently toxic to all parties involved. In this study we were not able to directly compare the responses of customers who experienced rage with the particular employees who were the targets of that rage, but we were able to gather information about rage incidents from the perspectives of both perpetrators (i.e., customers) and victims (i.e., employees) of rage. While employees cannot know what specic emotions customers are experiencing during a rage incident, they are able to observe most forms of rage expression through physical signs (e.g., redness, breathing and voice tone changes). The fact that Rage Spectrum Emotions are overt leaves open the possibility that employees and managers can readily identify escalating anger in customers and take more proactive steps to diffuse the situation before it progresses further. Expressing rage and the aftermath When customers experience rage emotions, they can choose to express these feelings through physical, verbal or non-verbal actions or they can displace their anger by taking it out on others. Customers can also experience rage emotions but elect to suppress their feeling of intense anger and not show it outwardly. In their open-ended descriptions of rage incidents and responses to the structured CRX items, some customers readily admitted to expressing their rage by throwing objects, pounding their sts, stomping their feet, making threats, yelling, cursing, calling employees names, glaring, head shaking, giving dirty looks,
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and turning red. Other customers described how they managed to hold in their extreme anger emotions even as they were having thoughts of wanting to commit violent acts against employees. As one customer explained, I remember wanting to scream at the top of my lungs and envisioning punching one of the helpers. The results suggest that there are ve basic forms of customer rage expression. While these are fairly consistent with those identied in research on road rage, our study reveals that Nonverbal Rage Expression is another potential type of customer rage expression. Non-verbal Rage Expression includes shaking ones head, rolling ones eyes, giving employees dirty looks and glaring at the service employee. Identifying this dimension that may be unique to customer rage incidents is particularly valuable because it represents an additional set of observable cues for frontline service personnel. In accord with AET (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996) and the theory of stress and coping (Lazarus and Folkman 1984) rage incidents were followed by organization-directed customer coping behaviors in the form of exiting, spreading negative word-of-mouth, and revenge-seeking. Although many of these behaviors could occur following any dissatisfactory service experience, it is important to compare the voracity with which customers engaged in these behaviors following an episode of rage as opposed to a more routine service failure encounter. For example, when writing about their post-rage behaviors toward the organization, customers tended to use very forceful wording, powerful phrasing, and empathic grammatical techniques such as I will NEVER go back there. Others reported that in addition to bad-mouthing the organization to family, friends, and co-workers, they also went to extra lengths to say that they posted negative comments on virtual message boards or blogged about it. This demonstrates that sabotage and revenge-seeking actions may be more prevalent following rage incidents than after other types of dissatisfactory service encounters. Linking emotions, expressions, and behaviors Our results suggest that the specic type of rage that a customer experiences may lead to certain forms of rage expression. For example, while both forms of rage tend to result in Verbal expression, Rancorous Rage emotions also tends to be linked with Non-verbal expressions (such as shaking of head, rolling of eyes, dirty looks). In contrast, Retaliatory Rage emotions tends to be linked with Physical expression (tried to physically harm a service employee, tried to cause damage to property and threatened to damage property) and Displaced expression (took anger out on other people near by, yelled at other people, and took their anger out on other people later on). Overall, Physical expressions (such as trying to physically harm a service employee, threatening to do physical harm to the service employee, trying to cause damage to the organizations property, threatening to do damage to the organizations property) are linked to the more aggressive behavior of seeking revenge, while Verbal expressions (swearing/cursing, yelling, insulting remarks and raised voice) tend to be linked to rela-
tively covert behaviors, such as exiting and spreading negative word of mouth. Similar to the effects of Verbal expression, Constructive expression (telling themselves to get over it and move on, told myself to calm down) is also linked to exiting. Taken together, the covert behaviors associated with verbal and constructive expressions suggest that some consumers are stealth ragers, who may hide their anger from the organization and then proceed to take their business elsewhere while also trying to inuence others to do the same (a case of Dont get mad, get even). These acts are carried out with no signals to the organization that there is a problem. Such a phenomenon may be of particular interest to organizations in light of conicting messages in social psychology studies about the impact of anger and catharsis on individuals. These studies explore the notion of whether feelings of personal anger can be vented through violent actions and acute expressions of aggression and whether active retaliation may be preferable to passive acceptance (e.g., Bushman 2002; Geen 2001; Geen and Quanty 1977). Along these lines, research on anger catharsis and aggressive complaining in service encounters indicates that angry outbursts by customers not only lead to feelings of relief and psychological well-being (i.e., coping), but also can result in positive behaviors toward the organization such as repeat purchasing (Bennett 1997). This paradoxical result may well explain the ndings in Table 4 that show that Physical expression is negatively associated with exiting, yet positively associated with seeking revenge. It appears that seeking revenge is a coping mechanism that provides sufcient catharsis to bring the customer back to a state of psychological equilibrium. Additional investigation may be needed into the specic short and long term effects on customers of concealing versus purging their anger through the various forms of customer rage expressions. Managerial implications Overall, the pattern of results demonstrates the importance of examining the full spectrum of discrete rage emotions and of determining how each specic group of emotions might predict the forms of rage expressions and behaviors that follow. Knowing this can help retailers: (1) identify the early signs of customer rage; (2) develop intervention mechanisms designed to interrupt the progression of rage and to attempt to curb the potential damage that rage may ultimately exact on employees and the organization; and (3) implement customer rage prevention strategies. As noted earlier in the paper, there is compelling evidence from previous studies that customer anger emanating from failed service encounters can be destructive for the organization and its employees. The results of our study clearly show (see Tables 3 and 4) that Rancorous and Retaliatory Rage emotions are linked to potentially damaging expressions (e.g., verbal and physical intimidation, taking anger out on other people) and, in turn, the expressions are linked to negative behaviors (e.g., Exit and Revenge). Such damaging expressions and behaviors impact not only the rm but sometimes other customers and also employees.
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To limit damage from a rage episode, there are a number of initiatives that management might implement. These can be grouped into two broad categories, the rst being micro-level (shop oor) and the second, macro-level strategies. First, regarding shop oor, frontline retail employees need to be trained to identify the early warning signs. For example, employees should take note of the customers Nonverbal expressions, especially any signs of shaking of the head, rolling of the eyes, glaring, and giving dirty looks. Such expressions tend to be associated with Rancorous Rage, which in turn can result in harmful negative word of mouth. Verbal expressions, such as swearing/cursing, yelling, even raising of the voice are certainly more obvious and should not be ignored, as they are linked to switching and negative word of mouth. Perhaps more serious are the Physical Rage Expressions, which can include attempting to physically harm a service employee, threatening to do physical harm to the employee, trying to cause damage to property or even threatening to damage the organizations property. When these expressions are observed, frontline retail employees should immediately seek the support of their supervisor so that rage can be thwarted or at least minimized before it results in damaging consequences. In the least, employees need to isolate the enraged customer from other customers in a shared retail setting. Other procedures designed to assist employees during a rage incident need to be instituted, including: Training employees not to take the complaint and accompanying abuse personally. Developing listening, empathy and anger management skills in frontline employees. Training employees to acknowledge, provide an explanation, and apologize for a failed encounter. Reward employees who demonstrate the willingness and ability to defuse customer rage incidents. At a more macro-level, retail management should seriously consider the following: Use technology to design early warning systems that signal the onset of customer anger. For example, voice recognition software in call centers may be used to detect rising voices or harsh tones. Caterpillar Inc. uses a similar strategy in a B2B context, as it monitors client equipment remotely by sending electronic signals to service technicians when problems are imminent. Decriminalize complaints so that employees are not afraid to accept and listen to the initial complaint (and thereby defusing it before it escalates), or record the incident in a complaint database. Finally, frontline employees and their supervisors need to engage in a thorough analysis of the rage incident, the likely triggers and relative effectiveness of strategies and tactics employed to defuse the situation so that the organization can learn from the experience and prevent rage from re-occurring. Specically,
each incident needs to be recorded, thoroughly analyzed, categorized, and stored for later comparison and benchmarking purposes. Further research It may be useful to consider various forms of coping and cognitive appraisal from the social psychology literature (Folkman et al. 1986) and to incorporate the effects of individual differences in emotional expressivity (Kring, Smith, and Neale 1994) and emotion expression ambivalence (King and Emmons 1990), in the study of customer rage. Other relevant individual differences, such as need for control, need for power (Shnabel and Nadler 2008), anger proneness (Spielberger 1999), and seeking redress (Chebat, Davidow and Codjovi 2005), may help explain why some customers exhibit rancorous rage while others retaliatory rage. Likewise, it is important to examine the relative impacts of rage emotions, expressions, and behaviors on other important outcome measures, such as repurchase intentions, customer loyalty, and customers willingness to pay price premiums. Moreover, since this study collected qualitative and quantitative data about actual rage incidents occurring in a cross-section of industries, it may also be helpful to develop a study that employs an experimental design, using hypothetical scenarios in a particular industry context in order to carefully map the nomological net and demonstrate causal links among customer rage-associated emotions, expressions, and behaviors in order to help predict which emotions and expressions are likely to result in certain behaviors towards an organization. Such an approach would provide for the systematic control over key constructs and extraneous variables and the ability to isolate and examine the effects of organizational responses. Another important contribution would be to investigate customer rage in a cross-cultural context to determine how emotion experiences, expressions, and behaviors may vary across different cultures (e.g., individualist versus collectivist) and to examine whether organizational responses to customer rage incidents should be standardized or customized across countries. This paper represents a rst attempt to arm marketing scholars and retailers with rich insights necessary to help defray both economic costs and social consequences of customer rage episodes by (1) identifying and dening the nature of customer rage-associated emotions, expressions, and behaviors as triggered by service failure encounters; (2) validating measurement scales for customer rage emotions, expressions, and behaviors; and (3) examining relationships between different types of rage emotions and expressions and behaviors. We encourage future research efforts that extend this study and offer further insights into the causes, symptoms, and solutions to rage episodes. Acknowledgments We appreciate the comments of the Editors and three anonymous reviewers and gratefully acknowledge the nancial support of the Australian Research Council.
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Appendix A.
Correlation matrix and descriptive statistics for structural model (rage emotionsrage expressions). Rancorous Rage Rancorous Rage Retaliatory Rage Verbal Physical Non-verbal Constructive Displaced Sample 1 Mean Std. deviation Sample 2 Mean Std. deviation 0.43 0.34 0.01 0.27 0.07 0.03 3.66 1.04 3.58 1.03 Retaliatory Rage 0.48 0.38 0.23 0.19 0.23 0.22 2.65 1.21 2.53 1.13 Verbal 0.36 0.38 0.20 0.53 0.09 0.34 2.66 1.14 2.69 1.14 Physical 0.06 0.41 0.31 0.11 0.07 0.36 1.30 0.66 1.24 0.57 Non- verbal 0.38 0.16 0.51 0.14 0.11 0.28 2.98 1.23 2.85 1.25 Constructive 0.12 0.26 0.15 0.03 0.03 0.03 3.05 1.15 2.98 1.19 1.83 1.04 1.85 1.02 Displaced 0.22 0.29 0.34 0.45 0.27 0.08
Key: Correlations for sample 1 are presented in the upper triangle while correlations for sample 2 are presented in the lower triangle of the matrix. Descriptive statistics are samples 1 and 2 are located at the bottom rows of this table.
Correlation matrix and descriptive statistics for structural model (rage expressionsrage behaviors). Verbal Verbal Physical Non-verbal Constructive Displaced Exit WOM Revenge Sample 1 Mean Std. deviation Sample 2 Mean Std. deviation 0.24 0.61 0.13 0.42 0.29 0.43 0.24 2.66 1.14 2.69 1.14 Physical 0.36 0.12 0.11 0.37 0.18 0.12 0.57 1.30 0.66 1.24 0.57 Non-verbal 0.61 0.16 0.12 0.32 0.22 0.37 0.14 2.98 1.23 2.85 1.25 Constructive 0.19 0.04 0.03 0.03 0.23 0.15 0.03 3.05 1.15 2.98 1.19 Displaced 0.41 0.55 0.34 0.11 0.01 0.09 0.27 1.83 1.04 1.85 1.02 Exit 0.15 0.11 0.12 0.09 0.07 0.81 0.18 3.59 1.32 3.57 1.33 WOM 0.58 0.03 0.56 0.10 0.17 0.56 0.15 3.58 1.34 3.44 1.33 1.57 0.96 1.53 0.81 Revenge 0.35 0.63 0.11 0.18 0.37 0.14 0.27
Key: Correlations for sample 1 are presented in the upper triangle while correlations for sample 2 are presented in the lower triangle of the matrix. Descriptive statistics are samples 1 and 2 are located at the bottom rows of this table.
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Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

Customer Rage Episodes: Emotions, Expressions and Behaviors

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

J.R. McColl-Kennedy et al. / Journal of Retailing 85 (2, 2009) 222237

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