An applied study on effects of negative word of mouth communication on consumer dissatisfaction

Consumers, at the very heart of marketing, are the target of mass communication on one side, while on the other they take part within the personal interaction networks informally built by themselves. Informal conversations among the consumers about the features, use, selling company and etc. of products or services have recently become a remarkable point of attention in marketing literature. In paralel with the advancing technologies, customers have been in a position to exchange information not only among the acquaintances but also the consumers all around the world and the company sales are not viewed as individual consumer sales, but as sales to a network of consumers. In paralel with the advances in communication and information technologies, word of mouth has assumed a much more effective role by transpassing the national boundaries, where more number of consumers share information in a rapid dissemination.In an environment where differentiation is extremely hard, consumers are exposed to mail bombing in many ways, picking up the right information is painstaking and last but not the least thousands of similar product or service options and the capability to procure them are readily available. Therefore, the succes in avoiding losing any loyal customers, assuring hundred percent customer satisfaction, and handling customer complaints has gained utmost importance whereby word of mouth has become much more significant for the marketers. In this study, the reasons for negative word of marketing and the effect of companys? success in handling complaints in a way to turn negative word of mouth into that of positive have been explored.