The impact of escalating service failures and internet addiction behavior on young and older customers' negative eWOM

Abstract

Abstract This study combines the theory of addictive behavior with the framework of customer complaining behavior to examine the effects of customers' Internet Addiction (IA) and their hotel service failure experiences on their negative word-of-mouth behaviors. Since there is a generational gap in internet use between young and older people, two experiments were conducted, each focusing on one of these populations. A series of analyses identified that IA and functional/technical service failure partially influenced four different types of customers' word-of-mouth (eWOM) behaviors on social media (i.e., Badmouthing, Tattling, Spite and Feeding the Vultures). Data were analyzed with sets of four multivariate regression models to evaluate eWOM behaviors. The findings suggest that both young and older customers represented more negative eWOMs when they experienced technical service failures. The findings were not consistent regarding functional service failures. IA was not a consistent predictor of young customers' negative eWOM, but it was a consistent predictor of older customers' negative eWOM for all service failure categories.