An asymmetric configural model approach for understanding complainer emotions and loyalty ☆ Berna Tari Kasnakoglu a, ⁎, Cengiz Yilmaz b,1 , Kaan Varnali c,2 a TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey b Department of Business Administration, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey c Department of Advertising, İstanbul Bilgi University, 34440 Istanbul, Turkey abstract article info Article history: Received 1 June 2015 Received in revised form 1 January 2016 Accepted 1 February 2016 Available online 22 March 2016 Few works emphasize the emotional nature of customer complaint behavior, and those that do so focus largely on negativity. The idea that specific emotions might lead to idiosyncratic reactions and that in some cases positive emotions may also be aroused during the complaint experience has been largely neglected. The study explores this issue by identifying specific emotions experienced by complainers and then relating them to resulting complainer loyalty levels, separately under conditions where the outcomes of the complaint process is evaluated favorably versus unfavorably. Complaint texts posted on a well-known website are content analyzed and six types of emotions (hopeful, puzzled, recessive, befooled, offended, and hypersensitive), three types of texting styles (general, specific, and threatening), and five types of complainer concerns (financial, technical, psycholog- ical, social, and physical) are identified via content analyses. Configural analyses reveal 33 combination paths of these antecedent conditions for complainer loyalty and 65 different combinations for disloyalty. Results suggest that the specific emotions approach potentially explains more about complaining customer behavior compared to the more general valence-based approach, and that post-complaint loyalty depends considerably on complainer emotions, concerns, and texting styles experienced and expressed during the complaint process. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Complainer emotions Customer complaint behavior CCB Complaint management Complexity theory fsQCA 1. Introduction Decades of research have established firmly that effective customer complaint management has strong impacts on customer satisfaction (e.g. Tax, Brown, & Chandrashekaran, 1998) and business performance (Yilmaz, Varnali, & Tari Kasnakoglu, 2016). In addition, although gener- ally viewed as negative instances on the part of customers, complaints can also be utilized as markers of areas in need of development and improvement (Larivet & Brouard, 2010). Resolving complaints favorably may not always suffice for good re- sults, however. It is possible that the disturbance in the firm–customer relationship may extend beyond the firm's well-meant efforts to reme- dy the complaint-generating situation, and the customer may choose to switch to another brand even when a complaint is resolved favorably. As Andreassen (1999, 2000) states, it is sometimes the initial affective reaction that determines the customer's ultimate level of satisfaction. The reactions of the customer and the form of the complaint might be different, for instance, when the complaint involves the electrical sys- tem of an automobile versus the impolite behaviors of an employee. It is therefore reasonable to expect that in the absence of other evidence the nature of the complaint itself could predict the post-complaint process attitudes and behaviors of complainers. Accordingly, the main focus of the present study is on the intertwined sets of relationships across complainer emotions during the expression of the complaint, major concerns voiced, and the style of expressing the complaint. These initial conditions are used as predic- tors of post-complaint complainer loyalty, separately under conditions of favorable and unfavorable resolution process. Depending on whether the complaining process is concluded favorably or unfavorably based on complainer perceptions, these three antecedent conditions (i.e. com- plainer emotions, complainer concerns, and texting styles) are expected to yield different outcomes in terms of the ultimate attitudinal state. Further, rather than the highly prevalent valence-based approach, which focuses only on negative-versus-positive emotions, the present study adopts the specific emotions approach to make a contribution to the customer complaint behavior (hereafter, CCB) literature. As Zeelenberg and Pieters (2004) state firmly, understanding the role of specific emotions experienced by customers during the complaining ex- perience (e.g. anger versus disappointment versus shame) would shed Journal of Business Research 69 (2016) 3659–3672 ☆ This research has been funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK Project #SOBAG 112K462). ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Business Administration, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, 06560 Ankara, Turkey. Tel.: +90 312 292 4148; fax: +90 312 292 4104. E-mail addresses: btari@etu.edu.tr (B. Tari Kasnakoglu), ycengiz@metu.edu.tr (C. Yilmaz), kaan.varnali@bilgi.edu.tr (K. Varnali). 1 Tel.: +90 312 210 30 66; fax: +90 312 210 7962. 2 Tel.: +90 212 311 7536; fax: +90 212 627 6995. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.03.027 0148-2963/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research