International Journal of Business, Economics and Law, Vol. 1 ISSN 2289-1552 2012 Page 171 PROFILING COMPLAINT BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS: A CASE STUDY IN SABAH, MALAYSIA Yin Ling Adeline Tam Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning University Malaysia Sabah Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia Email: adetam@ums.edu.my Tel: 6088-320000 ext. 5345 Tung Moi Chiew Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning University Malaysia Sabah Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia Email: chiew@ums.edu.my Tel: 6088-320000 ext. 5025 ABSTRACT This research intends to study the complaint behavior among the young adults in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia when they were dissatisfied with the service(s) provided. The main objective is to investigate the influence of various antecedent factors, i.e. general attitude towards business, sense of justice, perceived likelihood of success in complaining and perceived difficulties of complaining on the young adults’ complaint behavior following dissatisfaction faced in services received in the telecommunication industry. The complaint behavior could be classified into public complaint and private complaint as suggested by Day and Landon (1976) and Day (1977). This research also investigated the complaint methods that were commonly taken by young adults to resolve problems with the services they receive from the telecommunication service provider. Survey data was collected via a self-administered questionnaire. Data was analysed using IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) program version 20. Results showed that sense of justice is significant in influencing both private and public complaint behavior. A higher perceived likelihood of success in complaining, particularly for expressing their feeling and increasing consumer protection, will also encourage consumers to complain directly to the companies. This paper presents valuable information that can assist service managers and marketers in understanding the customer complaint behavior among this age group. Keywords: Consumer complaint behaviour, dissatisfaction, young adults INTRODUCTION Malaysia's telecommunications network is more advanced than any other in South-east Asia with the exception of Singapore (Market watch, 2012). Malaysia’s mobile phone penetration rate is more than 127.7 per 100 habitants while broadband penetration rate is 62.3 per 100 households in 2011 (Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission, 2012). The main network operators are Telekom Malaysia, Maxis, Celcom and Digi Communications. Other network players are include Axiata, Timedotcom, U Mobile, XOX and Redtone. Besides the growing numbers of competitors in the industry, identical services provided also allow customers to exit easily. Retention of customers is thus one of the main concerns in the industry. One approach to retain customers is to make sure that dissatisfied customers are being attended to in order to avoid losing the customers. The main users of the internet were those ranging in age from 20 to 39 years (48%), pre-teens and students below 19 years old make up 27.3 percent and 40 and above consists of 24.7 percent (Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission, 2012). Zulkefly and Baharudin (2009) pointed out that this is not surprising as the younger generations are digital natives (i.e., individuals born in the technological era) and will naturally be easily attracted to any technological gadgets. Since most of the users are young adults, this paper will focus on the young consumers between the ages of 19 to 40. This paper intends to analyse the complaint behaviour of a single age group in the telecommunication industry. This paper will review the consumer behavior of young adults in Sabah, Malaysia. Attitudes and experiences factors among consumers are the main focus in this research in order to investigate how the consumer reacts when they face dissatisfaction. LITERATURE REVIEW Complaining can be understood as an expression of dissatisfaction, whether subjectively experienced or not, for the purpose of venting emotions or achieving intra-psychic goals, interpersonal goals, or a combination of these (Kowalski, 1996). Crie (2003) defined consumer complaint behavior as consisting of all potential consumer responses to dissatisfaction involved in a purchase encounter. Day (1984) explained that complaining behavior is a function of the intensity of dissatisfaction. The disconfirmation model developed by Oliver (1980) is widely applied to explain the consumer dissatisfaction by previous researchers (Tronvoll, 2007a). When perceived performance falls short of consumer’s expectation, consumers encounter negative disconfirmation. Keng and Liu (1995) articulated that dissatisfaction was caused by negative disconfirmation of purchase