Research Article | Open Access
Imapct of Socio-demographic factors on Consumer’s Tendency to Exit– A MANOVA Analysis
Amit Kumar, Anupriya Kaur
Pages: 24-33
Abstract
Researchers and practitioners acknowledge that despite best efforts, product malfunction or service failures might
occur. To retain a dissatisfied consumer, marketers appreciate the information that consumers provide in form of
feedback or complaint. However, a worrisome aspect that emerged from the extant literature is that many
dissatisfied consumers choose not to complain and silently exit. In the current study, the role of six sociodemographic factors (industry, gender, age, income, education, and occupation) on seven predictors of consumer’s
tendency to exit (TE) (attitude toward complaining, discouraging subjective norms, perceived likelihood of
successful complaint, lower perceived switching cost, poor employee response, negative past experience and
complaint process) is examined, with a sample study in India. The research uses five-point Likert scale-based survey
data of 600 consumers of three services sectors i.e. hotels and hospitality, automobiles and organized retail stores.
Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed as a research method. Results show that industry
display difference in the context of TE and its predictors. Gender is not creating any difference in the context of TE
and its predictors. Consumers in the age group of 45-60 years show higher TE. Furthermore, the segment of less
educated consumers and retired consumers show a high tendency to exit.
Keywords
Complaint, customer complaint behavior, tendency to exit, socio-demographic, MANOVA