The impacts of situational factors on consumer misbehaviour in service outlets (on the example of Iranian chain stores)

The aim of the article. The aim of this study is to identify and explore the situational factors, which lead customers to misbehave in service settings. This study is designed to develop a better understanding of different drivers of misbehaviours from situational factors' perspective and examines the relationship of past misbehaviour and future misbehaviour intentions.The results of the analysis. In this study, the conceptual model is outlined. This model comprises five hypotheses between theses constructs: loyalty intentions, severity of misbehaviour, perceived opportunity, perceived risk, past customer misbehaviour and future misbehaviour intentions.Using survey responses from 384 customers of Iranian chain stores, the empirical results offer the support for the forwarded research hypothesis. Structural equation modelling is used to examine these associations. The data suggest that situational factors have impacts on the customer misbehaviour. The results show that the relationships between loyalty intentions, severity of misbehaviour, perceived risk and past misbehaviours are statistically significant. In addition to above hypothesis, the results provide support for the positive association between past customer misbehaviour and future misbehaviour intentions. However, the relationship between perceived opportunity and past misbehaviour is not statistically supported. Thus, utilizing the structural equation modelling to analyze the survey data indicates strong support for 4 of the 5 hypothesized associations.The research findings have the range of key implications for both academia and industry by focusing on the factors associated with both past and future customer misbehaviour. The results of this study outline the point that service manager should be cautious about the episodes of customer misbehaviour and its severity as the mechanism to control or manage the frequency of future occurrences. The findings also highlight the importance of customers to chain stores (by supporting the link of customer loyalty intentions and past misbehavior). In addition, it might be beneficial to train front employees to act peacefully and respectfully toward customers.Conclusions and directions of further researches. The novelty point of this study is to illuminate the impact of situational factors on misbehaviours for the first time based on the background of Iranian culture. As the matter of fact that customer misbehaviour is prevalent in the Iranian chain stores, identifying the related antecedents especially from situation side is on the great center of attention.