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Consumer Response to Unsatisfactory Purchases: A Survey of Perceiving Defects, Voicing Complaints, and Obtaining Redress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Arthur Best  and
Alan R. Andreasen
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Abstract

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A survey of consumer reactions to common purchases was conducted in 1975. Consumers perceive problems with many products and services, and voice complaints concerning about one-third of those problems. Third-party complaint processors play a very small role in buyer-seller disputes. Household status and type of problem influence perception of problems and choice of action or inaction. Satisfactory resolutions occur in somewhat more than half of voiced complaint cases. To increase voicing and fair handling of complaints, procedural changes at the buyer-seller level are suggested; to improve treatment of complaints that are not resolved at the buyer-seller level, improvements in community small claims courts are suggested.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , Spring 1977 , pp. 701 - 742
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

© Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1976.

The original version of this paper was distributed by the Center for Study of Responsive Law in 1976 under the title, “Talking Back to Business: Voiced and Unvoiced Consumer Complaints.” A shortened version has recently been published: Alan R. Andreasen and Arthur Best, “Consumers Complain—Does Business Respond?” 55(4) Harvard Business Review 93 (July-August 1977). We are grateful to David Caplovitz and Seymour Sudman for providing generous help in all aspects of this research, and particularly in the design of the sample and the questionnaire. Special recognition should be given to the staff members of the Call For Action groups that participated in the study. Their thousands of hours of work in conducting interviews made this study possible. Ellen S. Straus, Chairperson of Call For Action at the time the study was begun, provided imaginative and practical counsel. We would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Richard Abel, Daniel Clearfield, William L. F. Felstiner, Marc Galanter, Albert Hirschman, Laura Nader, and Ralph Nader on earlier drafts. The University of Illinois College of Commerce and Business Administration generously permitted use of its computer facility. The Center for Study of Responsive Law's work on this research was supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made are solely the responsibility of the authors.

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