The Role of Face Situation and Attitudinal Antecedents in Chinese Consumer Complaint Behavior

Abstract

An experiment investigating Chinese consumer complaint behavior was conducted in the Sports Center at the University of Hong Kong. Subjects were 53 male and 6 female college students. The dependent variable was whether or not the students would complain after buying a faulty product. It was hypothesized that, because of the salience of face concern in Chinese culture, students would be less likely to complain when the complaint situation involved direct confrontation with the responsible party than when it did not. Results supported the hypothesis. Three attitudes toward complaining were compared: perceived cost of complaining, norms of complaining, and perceived societal benefits of complaining. Only the cost of complaining discriminated between complainers and noncomplainers. This pattern of results is very different from that found in the West.