Justice theory has emerged as a frequently used framework in theory and among service leaders to investigate reasons for customer complaints and their satisfaction with the handling of the complaint (Orsingher, Valentini, & Angelis, 2010; Tax, Brown, & Chandrashekaran, 1998). Whereas the complaint of a single customer used to be heard by only a small circle of acquaintances, with the rise of social media it can now be transferred to a large community of other customers as well. Theory suggests that justice perceptions might be able to explain the reactions of third parties to a complaint. Therefore, we analyze 400 complaints of 8 companies from 4 different retail and service industries and their related comments from a large German online complaint forum. We found that complaints addressing procedural justice issues receive the most attention and a lot of support from other users. Complaints regarding interactional justice, receive more opposition than support, evidenced by the negative comments from the other users. They seem to perceive the interactional complaints as less severe and even defend the company in many cases by attributing part of the blame to the complainant. Companies should consider these findings when they manage their complaint process and when they try to assess the criticality of complaints. In addition, this study once again confirms the danger of not reacting to customer requests in a timely manner as this can be interpreted by customers as intentionally ignoring them, which leads to positive reactions of other users and to solidarity with the complainant.

• Maximilian Hausmann(Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich)
• Antje Niemann(Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich)