Trying to complain: the impact of self‐referencing on complaining intentions

This paper introduces the Theory of Trying to complaining behaviour, and argues that complaining intentions can be explained by the model. Moreover, we model propensity to self‐reference (SR) as a moderating variable, and suggest that the effects of the causes to complaining intentions depend on the SR‐level held by consumers. A sample of undergraduate business students participated in the study, where the goal was to get a better understanding of complaining intentions. Our study provides new and additional insights in the drivers of complaining by also taking dispositional personality differences into consideration. The results demonstrate that boundary conditions for main‐effect models like the theory of trying can be fruitfully addressed through the notion of individual differences. The research documented that customers' propensity to complain systematically differed as a function of their level of self‐referencing. This is both good and bad news to managers. The good news is that a proportion of the customers rely less on their previous experiences in the complaining domain when they form intentions to complain. The bad news is that some others do. The obstacle is that managers cannot tell by the look if they are talking to an individual with high or low propensity to self‐reference. As the customer base contains both types case could be taken in designing marketing communication campaigns that target the groups differently.