This study focuses on the development of a scale that can identify customers that are more prone to behave in a dysfunctional manner. Dysfunctional Consumer Behavior can negatively influence the organization profits, since this kind of consumer can generate monetary losses, such as fixing damaged property. Several hypotheses are proposed based on consumer characteristics that could foster dysfunctional behavior. For this, we used an hybrid methodology, combining Churchill's (1979) with C-OAR-SE (2002). In order to develop the scale, scenarios with dysfunctional behaviors where constructed. Respondents were asked to rate the appropriateness of each behavior and answers a group of questions based on the hypothesis developed. The data was collected over the Internet (Amazon Turk) and the statistical methods used for the scale development were cluster and discriminant analysis. The results showed evidence that it is possible to distinguish consumers through a discriminant function using interpersonal influence, such as aggressiveness, self-exposure, moral flexibility and machiavellianism; and personality aspects, such as dissatisfaction and acceptance.
The belief that the customer is always right is so powerful that it ended up gaining a status of common sense (HARRIS; REYNOLDS, 2003). However, this is not always true, and ends up being used to rationalize the dysfunctional consumer behavior (FULLERTON; PUNJ, 2004; NEALE; FULLERTON, 2010), which can be understood as behavior adopted by certain consumers that is against the rules and regulations established by the society in which they are inserted, during the consumption of a product and/or service (FISK et al., 2010).
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Some examples of such behaviors are the consumers that argue violently with attendants because they doesn't agree with something that happened, or consumers that take advantage of return policies looking to take some advantage--keeping the label in a dress to return it to the store after a huge party. Another typical case of dysfunctional behavior are the situations when consumers fight with each other, or consumes some food at the supermarket without paying for it at the check-out. Such behaviors, as can be seen, end up bringing not only financial losses, but can implicate in image impact too.
Studies in the field of Consumer Behavior have discussed the issue of such behavior and provide evidence that it has been occurring quite often, and that companies end up being afraid with regard to the way they should deal with this customers (WIRTZ; KUM, 2004; REYNOLDS; HARRIS, 2005). As a result, companies often create rigid customer service policies, looking to avoid this kind of behavior (WIRTZ; KUM, 2004).
Considering the losses and problems that customers that behave this way can cause, we believe that it is important to have a method to identify them. Thus, companies can monitor the behavior of these consumers, avoiding the problems that they can generate undermining the provision of services, both for themselves and for other consumers. 2ff7e9595c
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