JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS RESEARCH, cilt.9, sa.3, ss.141-165, 2019 (ESCI)
Consumer complaint behavior (CCB) is closely related to consumer satisfaction and is a behavior of consumers in case of dissatisfaction. In some instances, consumers may remain silent and take no action, even if they are dissatisfied with the product or service they have purchased. However, most of the time, consumers exhibit complaint behavior, and they could take various actions. Because of the differences in their actions, many taxonomies and models have been proposed in the literature. Although CCB has been studied by many researchers, the current state of knowledge and the evolution of CCB are still lacking, and the question as to how much research exists on different actions of CCB remains unanswered. Therefore, this study proposes a systematic, comprehensive, up-to-date, and chronological review of CCB. The systematic review process was conducted by following a keyword approach. Web of Science, Scopus, and EBSCOhost were used as the search databases. 195 articles published between the years 1977-2017 were analyzed to answer the research questions of the study. Those articles have published in journals with various disciplinary backgrounds, and they are mostly empirical studies (178 out of 195 articles). Surveys are the most common data collection method among those empirical studies. Exit/boycott, negative word of mouth (NWOM), and voice are the most frequently studied responses in the literature.