Jay Customers
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Defining Jay Customers (definition , categorization,
manifestation, and drivers).
The article includes a
very good literature review concerning what mean
"jay-customer". The author of article prefers a neutral
term which is 'dysfunctional customer behavior". Other
concepts interrelated with the subject of this article
are: "deviant consumer behavior, aberrant consumer
behavior, inappropriate behavior, consumer misbehavior
so on.
Christopher Lovelock coined the term
'jay-customer' with the aim to speak about a
dysfunctional customer who deliberately or
unintentionally disrupts service in a manner that
negatively affects the organization or other customers."
But "jay customers" are not equal they are
self-segregated for that the authors try to breakdown
them in different categories using different previous
researches: Zemke and Anderson (1990) egocentrics,
insulting whiners, hysterical shouters, dictators and
freeloaders; according with Bitner, Booms, and Mohr :
drunkenness, verbal and physical abuse, breaking company
policies and lack of cooperation. As an explanation of
these behaviors the author offer to us next idea: the
dysfunctional behavior occur with the objective of
gaining faster, superior or even free service in this
way such customers became thieves, rule breakers, the
belligerent, vandals, family feuders and deadbeats
(Lovelock, 1994). The motivators of such behaviors are
multiple and may be in connection with unhappy customers
which try to boycott a product, service. This thing has
been identified as consumer retaliation as a response to
dissatisfying services encounters and the need to
restore equity (Huefner and Hunt, 2000).
Reading this article was easy to understand that the old
slogan "the customer is always right" must be
re-analyzed because the dysfunctional customer behavior
has implications for the organization, employees and
fellow customers...