Dissatisfied customers often use social media to voice their complaints effectively, and firms strive to find solutions about how to respond to publicly visible service failure posts. We add to the emerging literature on complaint handling via social media by examining how complaining customers on a company's Facebook page prefer to be treated. We built on the multi-attribute product concept and conducted four sequential studies in the air transport industry. Studies 1–3 were conducted to identify the service failures with a high magnitude of negative utilities as judged by consumers. The studies also served to build a service failure scenario involving relevant service recovery attributes related to the entire complaint process. The results showed that lost baggage had the highest magnitude of negative utility. The attributes that consumers found most appropriate in the case of lost baggage were timeliness and type of initial response, communication modes, compensation type, and types of information throughout the complaint process. Study 4 took this further by putting participants into the scenario to analyze their preferences, segments, and profiles. The findings presented in this study have practical implications for airlines and consumers because the results reveal four distinct consumer segments and indicate the presence of heterogeneous preferences for communication modes and interaction types across segments.

不满意的客户经常使用社交媒体有效地表达他们的抱怨，公司努力寻找解决方案，以应对公开可见的服务失败帖子。我们通过研究在公司 Facebook 页面上投诉的客户更愿意接受怎样的对待，增加了关于通过社交媒体处理投诉的新兴文献。我们以多属性产品概念为基础，在航空运输行业进行了四项连续研究。进行了研究 1-3，以识别消费者判断的具有大量负面效用的服务故障。这些研究还有助于构建涉及与整个投诉流程相关的相关服务恢复属性的服务失败场景。结果表明，丢失的行李具有最高的负效用。在行李丢失的情况下，消费者认为最合适的属性是初始响应的及时性和类型、沟通方式、赔偿类型以及整个投诉过程中的信息类型。研究 4 通过将参与者置于情景中来分析他们的偏好、细分和概况，从而进一步实现了这一点。本研究中提出的发现对航空公司和消费者具有实际意义，因为结果揭示了四个不同的消费者细分市场，并表明跨细分市场存在对通信模式和交互类型的异质偏好。研究 4 通过将参与者置于情景中来分析他们的偏好、细分和概况，从而进一步实现了这一点。本研究中提出的发现对航空公司和消费者具有实际意义，因为结果揭示了四个不同的消费者细分市场，并表明跨细分市场存在对通信模式和交互类型的异质偏好。研究 4 通过将参与者置于情景中来分析他们的偏好、细分和概况，从而进一步实现了这一点。本研究中提出的发现对航空公司和消费者具有实际意义，因为结果揭示了四个不同的消费者细分市场，并表明跨细分市场存在对通信模式和交互类型的异质偏好。