Author(s)

Jihua Zhang, Ming Tan, Ningning Wang

Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

In the past, the research on complaints mainly focused on employee-employer dichotomy, focusing on the impact of employee complaints on employee performance. But in the actual work, front-line service workers and consumers have a lot of service contacts. If consumers witness complaints from front-line service workers, what impact will it have on corporate brand attitude? Based on the third-party perception perspective and the theory of moral justice, with perception of corporate morality as the mediating variable, this paper verifies that perceived corporate controllability by first-line service employees’ complaints can significantly affect consumer brand attitude, and introduces the boundary condition of perceived employee complaints. When perceived employee complaints are health factors, the more controllable the first-line service employees’ complaints are perceived. The higher the perceived corporate ethics, the lower the consumer brand attitude. When perceived employee complaints are motivating factors, there is no difference in the impact of perceived corporate controllability and low perceived employee complaints on consumer brand attitude. The paper examines the impact of corporate controllability on consumers perceived by the complaints of front-line service employees witnessed by consumers. It also studies the spillover effect of employee complaints from the perspective of third-party perception, which has important guiding value for guiding the management of front-line service employees and sustainable development.

Complaints, Perceived Enterprise Controllability, Perception of Corporate Morality, Brand Attitude

Zhang, J. , Tan, M. and Wang, N. (2019) The Impact of Consumers Witness Front-Line Service Employee Complaints on Corporate Brand Attitudes. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7, 443-457. doi: 10.4236/jss.2019.73037.