Manufacturer Responsiveness to Consumer Correspondence: An Empirical Investigation of Consumer Perceptions.

Although there is general agreement on the importance of the consumer correspondence handling function, specific steps businesses can take to satisfy consumers are relatively unexplored empirically. This study examines 300 consumers' responses to actual manufacturers' letters addressing complaints and compliments. The discussion focuses on understanding the components of consumer satisfaction to manufacturers' responses and provides suggestions to businesses to increase that satisfaction level. The landmark 1979 TARP study on consumer complaint handling in the United States provided both sensitivity to the issue of correspondence handling and the impetus for businesses to establish, monitor, and improve correspondence handling systems. That beginning proved very successful. Consumers wrote and businesses responded in ever increasing numbers. An update of the original TARP study found that almost one-half of the 643 private businesses surveyed handled 220 or more complaints a month compared to 100 or more reported in the earlier study, on average. The updated report concluded that businesses have increased the ". . . performance of both the operations and management functions . . . [and] the professionalism of their complaint handling units during the 1980s" (1986, 8). This positive response implicitly recognizes that customer satisfaction is worth pursuing for a number of reasons. Among them are cost effectiveness of keeping existing customers rather than trying to win new ones (Uller 1989), increased product selling to current customers, new customer attraction (Gulledge 1990), less potential for negative word-of-mouth communication (Richins 1983), and the ability to listen to customers for new product ideas (Hunt and Cooke 1990) and marketing information (Rosenberg and Czepiel 1984). Apparently, as Gilly and Hansen (1985) suggested, businesses may be beginning to think of complaint handling as a strategic tool and approach it as an opportunity rather than simply a cost. While most correspondence handling literature focused on complaint letters, a few studies addressed praise or compliment letters (Lewis 1983; Robinson and Berl 1980) and recognized the potential relationship building opportunities complimentary letters offer (Martin and Smart 1988). Effective correspondence handling allows a firm to be responsive to and strengthen its relationship with customers to ensure their continued business and also to cultivate a valuable source of information. While the need to effectively correspond with consumers meets with little disagreement, the manner in which to fulfill that goal is less clear. Although normative guidelines are available such as replying with speed and showing a personalized interest in the consumer (Dulek 1984; Fenvessy 1970), making it easy for the consumer to correspond by having an address or toll-free number readily available (Andreasen and Best 1977), and replying with empathy, assistance, and diplomacy (Cosenza and Wilson 1982), the general nature of these suggestions falls short of providing specific benchmarks for firms to follow. Additionally, much of the information available is anecdotal although higher degrees of satisfaction have been reported with receiving a response (Pearson, Hoskins, and Gazda 1980), speedy responses (Gilly and Gelb 1982), and type of response (Pearson 1976; Pickle and Bruce 1972). Specifically, how important are these variables and are there others that impact consumer satisfaction? What is the interaction among the variables and is it different for praise correspondence than complaint letters? To date, little effort has been given to systematically integrating multiple objectively measured dimensions of consumer correspondence handling with their impact on consumer satisfaction. In response to TARP's assessment that research was needed to, ". . . fill existing gaps in the literature includ[ing] . …