Technical support of Window XP ended in March, 8, 2014, and it makes OS(Operating System) users fall in a state of confusion. Sudden decision making of OS upgrade and replacement is not a simple problem. Firms need to change the long term capacity plan in enterprise IS management, but they are pressed for time and cost to complete it. Individuals can not help selecting the second best plan, because the following OSs of Window XP are below expectations in performances, new PC sales as the opportunities of OS upgrade decrease, and the potential risk of OS technical support ending had not announced to OS users at the point of purchase. Microsoft as the OS vendors had not presented precaution or remedy for this confusion. Rather, Microsoft announced that the technical support of the other following OSs of Wndow XP such as Window 7 would ended in two years. This conflict between OS vendor and OS users could not happen in one time, but could recur in recent future. Although studies on the ways of OS user protection policy would be needed to escape from this conflict, few prior studies had conducted this issue. This study had challenge to cautiously investigate in such OS user's reactions as the confirmation with OS user's expectation in the point of purchase, three types of justice perception on the treatment of OS vendor, psychological contract violation, satisfaction and the other betrayal behavioral intention in the case of Window XP technical support ending. By adopting the justice perception on this research, and by empirically validating the impact on OS user's reactions, I could suggest the direction of establishing OS user protection policy of OS vendor. Based on the expectation-confirmation theory, the theory of justice, literatures about psychological contract violation, and studies about consumer betrayal behaviors in the perspective of Herzberg(1968)'s dual factor theory, I developed the research model and hypothesis. Expectation-confirmation theory explain that consumers had expectation on the performance of product in the point of sale, and they could satisfied with their purchase behaviors, when the expectation could have confirmed in the point of consumption. The theory of justice in social exchange argues that treatee could be willing to accept the treatment by treater when the three types of justice as distributive, procedural, and interactional justice could be established in treatment. Literatures about psychological contract violation in human behaviors explains that contracter in a side could have the implied contract (also called 'psychological contract') which the contracter in the other side would sincerely execute the contract, and that they are willing to do vengeance behaviors when their contract had unfairly been broken. When the psychological contract of consumers had been broken, consumers feel distrust with the vendors and are willing to decrease such beneficial attitude and behavior as satisfaction, loyalty and repurchase intention. At the same time, consumers feel betrayal and are willing to increase such retributive attitude and behavior as negative word-of-mouth, complain to the vendors, complain to the third parties for consumer protection. We conducted a scenario survey in order to validate our research model at March, 2013, when is the point of news released firstly and when is the point of one year before the acture Window XP technical support ending. We collected the valid data from 238 voluntary participants who are the OS users but had not yet exposed the news of Window OSs technical support ending schedule. The subject had been allocated into two groups and one of two groups had been exposed this news. The data had been analyzed by the MANOVA and PLS. MANOVA results indicate that the OSs technical support ending could significantly decrease all three types of justice perception. PLS results indicated that it could significantly increase psychological contract violation and that this increased psychological contract violation could significantly reduce the trust and increase the perceived betrayal. Then, it could significantly reduce satisfaction, loyalty, and repurchase intention, and it also could significantly increase negative word-of-month intention, complain to the vendor intention, and complain to the third party intention. All hypothesis had been significantly approved. Consequently, OS users feel that the OSs technical support ending is not natural value added service ending, but the violation of the core OS purchase contract, that it could be the posteriori prohibition of OS user's OS usage right, and that it could induce the psychological contract violation of OS users. This study would contributions to introduce the psychological contract violation of the OS users from the OSs technical support ending in IS field, to introduce three types of justice as the antecedents of psychological contract violation, and to empirically validate the impact of psychological contract violation both on the beneficial and retributive behavioral intentions of OS users. For practice, the results of this study could contribute to make more comprehensive OS user protection policy and consumer relationship management practices of OS vendor.
Service failure and a poor service recovery may lead loyal customers to try to aggressively punish the service firm. We use perceived betrayal and desire for vengeance as the key constructs to understand customer retaliation. Perceived betrayal is defined as a customer's belief that a firm has intentionally violated what is normative in the context of their relationship. And the desire for vengeance is defined as the retaliatory feelings that consumers feel toward a firm, such as the desire to exert harm on the firm. The perceived betrayal and the desire for vengeance are key antecedents of retaliatory behaviors such as vindictive complaining, negative WOM and third-party complaining for publicity. The empirical results suggest that betrayal is a key motivational factor that lead customers to restore fairness by making use of all means, including retaliation. We also find that relationship quality has effect on a customer's response to a failure in service recovery. As the levels of relationship increases, a violation of the proper fairness has a stronger effect on the sense of betrayal experienced by customers. Considerable research has investigated consumer responses to dissatisfaction. But our study examine the response of outraged and highly frustrated consumers. We focus on emotional and behavioral processes that have not been covered by previous dissatisfaction researches and which are unique to outraged consumers caused by extremely dissatisfied purchase experience. It has recently been pointed out by various mass media that the customers not only have positive effects on the company performance but also put the company in crisis. It has often been reported that one customer's dissatisfaction, for example, never ends as it is, and it tends to grow for retaliating upon the company, depending on the level of seriousness of the dissatisfaction. This sometimes leads to a lawsuit against the company. Our study focuses on the customers' emotional and behavioral responses induced by their extreme dissatisfactions. We divided the customer groups into the customers with high relationship quality and the customers with low relationship quality, and the difference between two groups is examined. The objective of this study is to comprehend the causal relationship between the feeling of betrayal caused by the service failure and the retaliatory behavior triggered by the desire of revenge. Our study is divided into three parts. First, a causal relationship between perceived unfairness and the perceived betrayal and desire for revenge. Second, the effect of the perceived betrayal and desire for revenge on the retaliatory behavior is investigated. Finally, the moderating role of relationship quality in the causal relationship between the unfairness in service recovery and the perceived betrayal is analyzed. This study finds the following empirical results. The distributive unfairness, procedural unfairness and interactional unfairness had significant effects on the perceived betrayal. Especially, the perceived distributive unfairness results in the highest perceived betrayal. When the service company does not provide customers proper and sufficient compensation for the failure, they feel the strong sense of betrayal. And in the causal relationship between the perceived betrayal, desire for revenge and retaliatory behavior, the perceived betrayal has significant effects on e desire for revenge. In addition desire for revenge has significant effects on negative word of mouth, retaliatory complaining behavior and publicity of complaints through third group. Therefore the perceived unfairness has effects on retaliatory behavior through the mediation of the perceived betrayal and desire for revenge. Finally the moderating role of relationship quality was examined in the relationship between the unfairness and perceived betrayal. If the customers experienced the perceived unfairness in the process of service recovery, the customers with high relationship quality feel the stronger perceived betrayal than the customers with low relationship quality do. When they experience the double service failure, the customer group with high relationship quality accumulating the sense of trust feel the more perceived betrayal than the customer with low relationship quality who do not have strong trust. The contribution of this study is to find the effect of the service failure on the retaliatory behavior with the moderating roles of relationship quality. The dimensions of unfairness in service recovery is found to have differential effects on the perceived betrayal, desire for revenge. And these differential effect is moderated by the level of relationship quality.