Christopher Lovelock (1994) coined the term jaycustomers to refer to dysfunctional customers who deliberately or unintentionally disrupt service in a manner that negatively affects the organization or other customers. However, to date, no study has explicitly focused on the consequences of such dysfunctional customer behavior. The aim of this article is to advance understanding of the effects of dysfunctional customer actions through concentrating on exploring and describing the consequences of such behavior for those involved in service encounters. In this regard, this study is designed both to respond to recent calls for further research into these issues and to fill this gap in extant knowledge. A review of the literature regarding dysfunctional customer behavior finds limited attention devoted to the effects of such behavior. To explore the nature and dynamics of dysfunctional customer behavior, field research was conducted and extant theory evaluated leading to the development of a propositional inventory and a framework of the effects of such behavior. Briefly, dysfunctional customer behavior was found to have consequences for customer-contact employees, customers, and organizations.

Christopher Lovelock originated the term "jaycustomer" behavior to refer to customers who deliberately act in a thoughtless or abusive manner, causing problems for the firm, employees, or other customers. An overview of existing literature reveals the focal concentration of empirical research regarding the listing or categorization of jaycustomer behaviors has been on individual forms. While the need for a development of a typology of general or all-embracing jaycustomer behaviors has been recognized, and forwarded by a small number of researchers, such efforts have been anecdotal or conceptual in nature, or have emerged as part of wider research. The aim of this study is to advance understanding of the different forms of jaycustomer behaviors through providing empirical insights that explore and describe the activities and motivations of such "deviant" or "dysfunctional" customer behaviors through garnering empirical insights from both customer-contact employees and customers themselves. After a review of existing literatures and a discussion of the research design and approach adopted, the findings from over 100 in-depth interviews, utilizing critical incident technique, are presented and the implications of the study discussed.

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PurposeProposes responding to earlier calls for further research into “fraudulent” or “feigned” customer complaints, and providing insights which explore and describe the motivations and forms of such deliberate “illegitimate” customer complaints.Design/methodology/approachCritical incident technique was utilized in analyzing 104 interviews with customers who had knowingly made an illegitimate complaint within the six months prior to the interview. Data collection stopped at the point of theoretical saturation and was subsequently analyzed according to the coding procedures advocated by Strauss and Corbin (open, axial and selective coding).FindingsTwo key insights emerged from data analysis. First, coding procedures revealed four distinct forms of customer complainants. These are labeled; “one‐off complainants”, “opportunistic complainants”, “conditioned complainants”, and “professional complainants”. Second, six main motives for articulating fraudulent complaints were uncovered during data analysis. These are termed; “freeloaders”, “fraudulent returners”, “fault transferors”, “solitary ego gains”, “peer‐induced esteem seekers”, and “disruptive gains”.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is constrained by its exploratory design and qualitative methods employed. Subsequently, future studies could employ survey methods to improve empirical generalizability. Future studies could adopt a more inclusive approach and incorporate insights from employees, managers, and other relevant actors within service encounters.Practical implicationsPractical implications highlighted by the study include a need for businesses to examine and, in many cases, reevaluate their personnel training, customer complaint and service recovery procedures. Furthermore, managers may wish to enforce mechanisms wherein customer complaints are monitored and tracked in a manner that assists in the identification and challenging of re‐offending fraudulent complainers.Originality/valueThe study constitutes the first systematic attempt to explore and describe illegitimate customer complaining behaviors.