Why not complain? A paradoxical problem for mobile service and application providers

Abstract

Complaints from dissatisfied users of information systems (IS) help service and product providers decrease user churn and switching, prevent negative word-of-mouth, and improve their services and products. However, many dissatisfied individuals do not complain at all; rather, they remain silent, switch, or quit usage. The dilemma is particularly relevant in the context of mobile services and applications, in which only a fraction of users has been found to complain after negative experiences, even extreme ones. Although researchers have studied the reasons for complaining, only a few have investigated the reasons why individuals do not complain. To our best knowledge, there are no studies explaining IS users’ noncomplaining behavior. To address this gap, we developed a context-specific theory for mobile service and application users’ noncomplaining behavior by applying the grounded theory (GT) approach. GT enabled us to discover eight issues influencing noncomplaining behavior, of which three have not been presented in the prior studies on the topic. Our attempt is to open the avenue for further noncomplaining research in IS and to assist practitioners in tackling the users’ context-specific reasons for not voicing their complaints.