Examining consumer complaints from an on-demand service platform

Service platforms have rapid development in the online-to-offline new retail era. Although service platforms provide shopping convenience to consumers, they also face many challenges caused by the lack of regulations and relatively immature and unstandardized operations compared with traditional commercial markets. The downsides of service platform operations thus lead to consumer complaints. Using empirical evidence from an on-demand service platform (i.e., Meituan), we examined the different determinants of consumer complaints about the platform and merchants. We found that not all individual attributes or overall performance indicators of consumer dissatisfaction lead to complaints. Consumers can have the appropriate attribution of complaints about merchants or platforms when they encounter product or service failures, which we refer to as the self-influence effect of consumer complaints. In addition, we found the spillover effect of consumer complaints. Consumers do not always exactly match the objects being complained about. They attribute product or service failures by merchants to not only merchants themselves but also the platform, and thus complain about both. Consumers also complain about merchants when failures come from the platform's delivery service. Further, we found that the merchants' property of belonging to a large chain has the significant self-influence effect and spillover effect on consumer complaints. This study offers guidelines for merchants and service platforms to set priorities for improving factors that lead to consumer complaints and suggests ways to achieve better performance and reduce complaints about both the merchants and platforms.