Conducting Cross-National Consumer Policy Research

ABSTRACT - In light of the increasing involvement of U.S. academic researchers in cross-national studies of consumer policy and consumer behavior, this paper reports the authors' experiences in managing a study of consumer satisfactions and complaint behavior in six Western European countries in 1978-79. The paper discusses difficulties in coordination and motivation as well as in research design that appear to be unique in these cases. Particular attention is focused on the need for--and consequent problems involved in--a "research team" approach to implementation. The paper concludes with a set of ten rules for more effective management of cross-national projects.

Citation:

Alan R. Andreasen and Jean M. Manning (1980) ,"Conducting Cross-National Consumer Policy Research", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 07, eds. Jerry C. Olson, Ann Abor, MI : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 77-82.

Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, 1980     Pages 77-82

CONDUCTING CROSS-NATIONAL CONSUMER POLICY RESEARCH

Alan R. Andreasen, University of Illinois

Jean M. Manning, Marketing Consultant, Champaign, IL

[The authors wish to thank the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels, for support of the project discussed in this paper.]

ABSTRACT -

In light of the increasing involvement of U.S. academic researchers in cross-national studies of consumer policy and consumer behavior, this paper reports the authors' experiences in managing a study of consumer satisfactions and complaint behavior in six Western European countries in 1978-79. The paper discusses difficulties in coordination and motivation as well as in research design that appear to be unique in these cases. Particular attention is focused on the need for--and consequent problems involved in--a "research team" approach to implementation. The paper concludes with a set of ten rules for more effective management of cross-national projects.

INTRODUCTION

The present paper brings together and systematizes policy research in Western Europe in 1978 and 1979. As a contribution to the practice of marketing research management, the paper is designed to forewarn the naive researcher (both American and non-American) of some of the unexpected pitfalls (and pleasures) of such enterprises. This forewarning seems particularly timely given the enthusiasm of many of our colleagues for undertaking similar projects.

Reflection reveals that the critical features of the project were the result of three conditions:

1.  That we were conducting cross-national research,

2.  That we were conducting consumer policy research,

3.  That we were conducting both cross-national and consumer policy research.

This paper focuses on the first and third features since it is the cross-national aspect of the research that is of special interest here. To provide the necessary background for such a discussion, however, we begin by describing the genesis, objectives and general scope of the project.

The Cross-National Study of Consumer Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior

In the spring and summer of 1977, Andreasen and Best completed work on a major study of the dissatisfactions and complaining behavior of 2400 U.S. households making 28,574 purchases in 34 product and service categories. Carried out for Ralph Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law, the study spawned a number of articles (e.g., Andreasen 1977; Andreasen and Best 1977) in the rapidly growing special interest area in marketing concerned with post-purchase consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction (CS/D) and its consequences. A series of annual conferences on the topic has developed, a number of dissertations have been completed and the journals are increasingly featuring articles on the topic. As seems to be a feature of the life cycle of many special topics in marketing, the focuses of the studies that followed our early efforts become increasingly narrow and more precise. In effect, the Andreasen/Best study, along with the work of Day and Landon (Day and Landon 1976) and a few others (e.g., Handy and Pfaff 1975, Warland et al. 1975), painted the outlines of the problem and then others filled in the "nooks and crannies" of the theory, methodology and substantive knowledge in the area. While such a developmental pattern can lead to a desirable deepening and broadening of a fledgling area, the present writers were very much concerned that the topic not fall victim to the life cycle decay experienced by other short-lived topics in marketing that behaved like fads but deserved not to be. One of us had lived through just such an experience with the topic of ghetto marketing (Andreasen 1978).

Thus, one of the explicit objectives of the present study was to extend the Andreasen/Best work in a manner that would break new ground on broad major policy issues where our ignorance was presently great. The chance to replicate the earlier study in several Western European countries represented just such an opportunity.

Despite the involvement for many years of governments in all western nations in increasing consumer welfare, there remains considerable variation in the importance attached to this problem and to the structures and systems used to implement solutions. Our initial evaluation of the information needs of consumer policy planners in several Western countries revealed that:

...data on consumer problems and complaining behavior...can help policymakers in individual countries to make short-run decisions about where and how much to concentrate protection activities under present structures and procedures. Similar data on several countries can further help a policymaker decide for the longer run whether his or her country should adopt the more effective structures and procedures of another country (Andreasen and Manning 1979, emphasis added).

Thus, a second goal of the project was a very practical one: to provide consumer policymakers with a useful sample data base and a replicable methodology for both long-run and short-run decisions.

The third goal of the study was to contribute to the advancement of marketing knowledge and theory by extending the work of the Thorellis and others (Thorelli and Thorelli 1977) by investigating comparative marketing systems from the consumer perspective.

PROCEDURE

For reasons elaborated below, it was decided early that the project would only be successful if there was involvement in it by research specialists in each of the countries to be studied. Thus, the first task in the project was to put together a team of researchers meeting the following qualifications:

1.  Experience in survey research as well as in one of the skill areas needed for the study;

2.  Interest in, and experience with, consumer protection problems;

3.  Practical experience in producing useful research and/or consulting advice for government, business and/or consumer groups;

4.  Existing on-going contacts with groups likely to use project results;

5.  Good grounding in marketing, economic and consumer theory;

6.  Reputation for high quality work; and

7.  Reputation for hard work, meeting deadlines, and effective writing.

The team members recruited in the summer of 1978 were the following:

Johan Arndt, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing, Institute of Marketing Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, Norway.

Manfred Bruhn, Ph.D., Lecturer in Marketing and Business Administration, Institut fnr Marketing, Westfalia Wilhemms-UniversitSt, Munster, West Germany.

Flemming Hansen, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing, Copenhagen School of Economics and Business Administration, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Claes-Robert Julander, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Department of Economic Psychology, Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden.

Eric Langeard, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing, Institut d-Administration des Entreprises, UniversitT d'Aix-Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, France.

Heribert Meffert, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing and Business Administration and Direktor, Institut fnr Marketing, Westfalia Wilhemms-UniversitSt, Munster, West Germany.

Folke +lander, Ph.D., Professor of Economic Psychology, Aarhus School of Business Administration, Aarhus, Denmark.

W. Fred van Raaij, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.

In 1979, Professor John F. Pickering, Professor of Industrial Economics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology was added as the U.K. representative. Efforts to secure "qualified" collaborators in Belgium, Italy and Spain proved unsuccessful.

Subsequent steps involved securing funding for the first year's project management and establishing a research base at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) in Brussels. By September 1979, studies were completed in one country, were in the analysis phase in another and were planned for fall implementation in three others.

CROSS-NATIONAL RESEARCH

What does it mean to the research manager to be faced with the task of carrying out research in two or more countries? While there are unique technical and methodological problems (to be discussed below) the principal feature of such research, the one that is the dominant feature of our assessment of our own experiences, is that it requires the collaboration of researchers in the countries in question. Both benefits and costs accrue in such collaboration. The benefits for the most part are fairly obvious, although we did encounter several unexpected returns along the way. The costs, however--at least of collaboration with independent, academically trained and employed European researchers--were largely unanticipated.

Benefits of Cross-National Collaboration

The benefits of cross-national collaboration can appear at each stage of the typical research project.

1.  The involvement of "local" researchers can materially assist with funding. First, local researchers will obviously be more aware of local funding opportunities and more politically knowledgeable about how to tap them. But even more important, in seeking non-local funding, it was our experience that the mere presence of "nationals" on a research team substantially increased the probability that such funding would be obtained. There are several reasons for this:

a.  For reasons noted below one can argue that the research itself will be more efficiently carried out and will yield a better quality final product.

b.  The presence of local collaborators can imply that the target country will be receptive to the research and interested in its results, since many funding agencies are sensitive to charges of carpetbagging and exploitation of local situations, especially in developing nations.

c.  Many internationally-oriented funders see collaboration among scholars of different countries as an end in itself, fostering increased international understanding and possibly leading to longer term cooperative efforts.

d.  Finally, it is also likely that the prior assembly of a research team will establish the U.S. researcher's credibility and assuage fears that one is simply seeking subsidy for a pleasant "year abroad."

2.  There will be increased effectiveness and efficiency of secondary data searches since local researchers (a) know the sources and citations (or at least the procedure by which these can be discovered); (b) can summarize the relative contribution of materials more quickly, especially if they are in a foreign language; and (c) can evaluate the quality of a given citation vis-a-vis alternatives. It should be noted, however, that library resources in the English language overseas are much poorer than those in the U.S., and the U.S. researcher is strongly advised to (a) conduct a thorough literature review before leaving home; (b) take as much material overseas as possible; and (c) make arrangements "back home" for someone, if necessary, to search out and ship additional materials.

3.  Local researchers can advise on design alternatives. As will be discussed below, two problems in the present study required considerable local advice. The first problem dealt with the feasibility cost of those strategies.

4.  Local "nationals" can obviously assist in questionnaire design and translation. As has been frequently discussed in the literature, the potential confounding effects of subtle wording changes across languages can be substantial, although, as we shall note below, we believe this problem can be overrated.

5.  They can assist in the analysis through their intimate knowledge of the subtleties of local customs and mores. It is possible for an outsider to read about, visit or discuss local institutions and people, but as anthropologists have learned, it takes years to truly understand one culture. And, given that many cross-national projects will involve several countries, the use of local "interpreters'' becomes unavoidable. One suspects that this is particularly important for the mature North American researcher who is likely to be more handicapped by ethnocentrism than bilingual Europeans, for example.

6.  Finally, local researchers can materially assist in diffusing the results of the research within the country, and elsewhere outside the U.S.

Costs of Cross-National Collaboration

Working with academics in several geographically spread research sites, possibly seeking out and therefore responding to local funding opportunities, brought us a number of problems unanticipated when we embarked on the project. The problems generally fell into one of two categories: coordination and motivation.

Coordination.  A research team can, of course, be treated as a set of independent entrepreneurs working separately but in parallel. Or an attempt can be made to have them work together as a true team, building on the potential for synergism and for other collaborations with the team. In our naivete, we confidently expected the second model to guide our coordination efforts. In fact, it is now our conclusion that unless the group can be physically brought together, forging a synergistic team in cross-national research may not be possible. This, of course, is likely to be a function of the structure of a given project and, more importantly, its resources. We found ourselves over the year, in the absence of resources, attempting to achieve some kind of teamwork and synergism through memos and telephone calls that were designed to cross-pollinate the research ideas we accumulated from each country. We heard no sets of team members directly contacting others about the project except for chance encounters at conferences. This, we suspect, is in part a result of the high cost of telephone service in Europe, the inefficiencies of some European mail services, some residual provincialism, and the life cycle phenomenon we shall discuss below.

The consequence for us was that a substantial communication burden was placed on us. Were it not for the assistance of a multilingual typing and telephoning staff and access to long distance telephone services (and to individuals adept at coping with European telephone peculiarities) provided to us by EIASM in Brussels, the burden may well have proved insurmountable. Future researchers should either secure sufficient resources for the meetings that would make the research team approach work or ensure themselves of the communications base that is essential for a "central coordinator" approach.

Motivation.  Perhaps the most difficult problem we faced over the year was motivating team members to complete assigned tasks within established time frames. A review of other studies indicates that the majority of empirical comparative studies in marketing involves either a U.S. researcher coming to Europe (often on sabbatical) to replicate a study done at home (e.g., Hempel and McEwen 1976) or a sympathetic colleague in Europe "picking up" a U.S. study. In both cases, motivation is not likely to be a problem, the study does not have to be marketed to the local researchers.

On the other hand when multicountry replications are envisioned, two consequences for researcher motivation are immediately apparent. First, there will inevitably be variation in the participants' enthusiasm for the venture requiring more attention to motivating activities. Second, the central researchers' "span of coordination" will be increased, leaving less time for motivating each research participant.

But this would be true for any multisite research project in a single country. In Europe, however, the problem is compounded by the largely different orientation toward empirical research among many marketing academics. Historically, European academics have been more inclined and, one assumes, rewarded for theoretical rather than empirical contributions to the science of marketing. Further, perhaps as a consequence, they are accustomed to longer completion times for projects and seem less concerned with meeting deadlines and rapidly turning around project materials. Two compelling hypotheses may be offered to explain this. First, it may be that there is an enduring difference between European and American marketing academics reflecting fundamental differences in educational philosophy. Thus, Europeans may be "constitutionally" given more to thought than to action, to deductive rather than inductive modes of enquiry, to the purity of abstract systems over the messiness of real world data, and/or to the advancement of pure science over the solving of practical problems. On the other hand, Americans may be driven by a work ethic that stresses long hours, a fast pace and sacrifice of non-work pleasures.

An alternative hypothesis that is at the moment more appealing to us grants these differences, and suggests that they are not enduring but only reflect the fact that European marketing academics may be at an earlier stage in what could be called the "Marketing Academic Career Life Cycle." Thus, the differences currently evident may be only temporary. If, as implied above, the hallmark of much of American research today is that it is (a) action oriented; (b) inductive; (c) practical and (d) based on real world data, this can be traced to historical changes in the supply of and demand for research. Supply of skills in the U.S. became stronger following the Gordon-Howell and other studies in the late fifties and early sixties that urged business schools to increase skill training in basic sciences in their curricula; in addition, talented marketing Ph.D.s chose more often to minor in quantitative and/or social science disciplines. On the demand side, the growing sophistication of U.S. corporations in the use of advanced research techniques put a major pressure on scholars to develop strong empirical skills that they could use in consulting and in training their students. Journals in marketing research and consumer behavior soon appeared to support these developments.

It may be speculated that similar forces may soon be affecting European scholarship. As more foreign scholars return from U.S. institutions with an empirical orientation, they are increasingly likely to encounter national and multinational firms in their own countries needing consultants and students with strong empirical skills. These two forces may significantly alter the climate for research in Europe. In our opinion, the major impact of these forces is still five or ten years away. In the meantime, the differences in philosophy create immediate motivational problems for the American-trained cross-national researcher.

While in the present project, all of those involved were, in varying degree, enthusiastic and committed to the venture, the level of enthusiasm and commitment ebbed and flowed. The problem we faced is most easily seen by imagining the hypothetical extreme case, the researcher at his or her nadir.

The symptoms are clear: he or she does not respond to inquiries, makes promises of accomplishments that are not kept, does not venture contributions to the project, has excuses for inactivity that are always unanticipated and that place blame on "outside forces," and always misses meetings. What does one do with this reluctant coworker? Our experience suggests that the first and most important step is to try to learn the causes of the reluctance. Several hypotheses will suggest themselves:

a.  The reluctant coworker has many irons in the fire and is constantly evaluating the alternatives for potential payoff. He or she believes that the project will not get off the ground.

Solutions: One possibility is, of course, to simply push ahead with one's more enthusiastic colleagues and demonstrate the high payoffs to the laggard reluctant coworker. This will have the secondary benefit of reducing the workload and frustration of the project coordinator. If, however, parallel performance is essential, more immediate concrete rewards can be developed. Two obvious possibilities are publication and participation in conferences which can go on the vita. A working paper series can be developed, a section of a national or international conference can be set aside or the project's own conference can be organized.

b.  The reluctant coworker is merely waiting for others to do the necessary work, secure funding, design studies, questionnaires and so forth.

Solutions: If this parasitical attitude does not change, the coworker should be dropped from the project. On the other hand, the attitude may be in part the result of your holding out the prospect of central funding, a possibility you should (probably realistically) minimize--if you must mention it at all.

c.  The reluctant coworker has weak training or little or no experience in empiricism and really does not know how to get going.

Solutions: Concrete suggestions for action can be made. Project coordinators can propose more joint undertakings, working papers, funding proposals, and/or visits to potential funding sources.

d.  The researcher is very busy and, while enthusiastic, finds it hard to allocate time to your project. Assuming that one has taken care to seek out the best research colleagues, this will be the most likely explanation of reluctant performance. Indeed, it is a problem that should affect all members of the research team if they are active researchers and contributors to the field of marketing.

Solutions: The problem is, of course, to capture the researchers' attention and time and propel them toward accomplishing the project's goals. In our experience, peer pressure is most effective in bringing this about. First, "reluctant" researchers must be constantly informed of the progress of others. We recommend regular project bulletins and the most rapid and dramatic dissemination of colleague's successes as possible. Second, meetings should be scheduled as often as is practical with specific time set aside for each researcher to report on progress (or lack of progress). This threat of possible exposure appeared to be the single most effective tool for stimulating forward momentum on our project. Third, opportunities to present papers within and without the research team also will heighten the cost of non-performance and precipitative action. Fourth, one should not be reluctant to play upon national pride by pointing out how country A is exceeding traditional rival B. This stratagem is likely to be especially useful if part of the problem in country A is a reluctant agency or sponsor who might respond to the cross-national challenge. Fifth, on the other hand, positive rewards should be maximized. Many researchers are strongly motivated by being part of a team. For most members of our group, this sense of "teamness" did not emerge until our first meetings were held. The North American researcher should not assume prior acquaintance of team members and the kind of frequent interaction among colleagues at different institutions one finds in the U.S. This is, in part, the result of language and other historic barriers between countries, the costs and logistical difficulties of travel (at least in the past), and the absence of many annual marketing conferences. This is somewhat less of a problem with academics from some countries, particularly the Scandinavians, who seem historically to have been much more "international" and "plugged in" than those in other countries.

Finally, active researchers may be actively discouraged from participating if they feel that the project is moving slowly or that they are not getting the opportunity to make any important contributions to the project's outcomes. To solve this problem, we made a major change in the roles of project team members over the course of the year that was to shift each of them from being only a "country specialist" to serving the group as an expert in a particular subject area of importance to the project. Thus, one participant came to focus on questionnaire design issues, another on economic and psychological models of market behavior and still another on the characteristics and costs of alternative research suppliers. Presumably, this specialization of efforts reduced some researchers discouragement at the high level of duplication and overlap in the project's developmental stages.

A Final Motivational Problem

Reflection on this project's life history reveals a U-shaped "enthusiasm curve" that seemed to affect us as well as the other team members. The curve, which we suspect is common to virtually all research, features high enthusiasm at the outset when (a) the original issues are fresh and still challenging; (b) the problems of carrying out the project do not seem great since they haven't been encountered; and (c) the time frame still seems short and the results almost at hand. This stage is then followed by a considerable drop in enthusiasm as (a) one realizes that the technical problems of implementing the original conception are more numerous and more serious than one imagined; (b) the scope of the original conception has to be compromised and trade-offs have to be made in the design; (c) distractions of other, fresher challenges appear; and (d) the enthusiasm of meeting the challenges fades as one confronts them for the sixth--or twentieth--time. Fortunately, time and perseverance gradually bring the problem under control and one gets an apparent second wind. In retrospect, we should have anticipated this cycle and prepared ourselves psychologically and tactically for the "middle period." The timing of our motivational efforts should have been much better orchestrated than it was.

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS

There are a number of technical/methodological problems in cross-national research that deserve to be brought to the attention of others about to do such research.

Language.  It is assumed that the dangers of having to work in multiple languages are obvious to the naive researcher. While these problems can be serious, there is, in our experience, an unrecognized danger in overemphasizing these issues. We have already noted the problems of coordinating and motivating non-American academics. Since their training and collegial norms emphasize the need for careful theory-building and considerable preparation before going into the field, there is the possibility that introducing these kinds of issues can divert European academics from the task at hand.

Limitation on Design Possibilities.  An important question in any research design is whether one is going to use mail, telephone or personal interviews. The naive researcher assumes the key issues are cost, speed and reliability. In reality, in cross-national studies some designs may simply be impossible.

A key question in the present study was whether telephone interviewing was possible in all countries (since this was the technique used in the U.S. study). It turned out that it was not possible to use this approach in Norway where telephone ownership was only 339 per 1000 population compared to 694 in Sweden and 677 in the U.S. Further, the familiarity of the populations in several countries (e.g., Norway) with mail questionnaires when coupled with lower literacy rates made a mail approach infeasible. This then recommended personal interviews as the best research vehicle in these countries. On the other hand, cost advice by local researchers indicated that the use of this technique in most other countries would be prohibitively expensive. This left us with a serious practical dilemma: given modest levels of funding, is it feasible to think one can use uniform methodology across countries? Or, given that methodological uniformity is important, should one potentially compromise research quality by adopting a low cost version of the required methodology (e.g., in the present case, use students in class projects to conduct personal interviews)?

Cost Variation.  We found surprisingly great variance in the cost of given methodologies across Western European countries. We caution the neophyte American researcher against extrapolating cost estimates from one country to others. Ratios of relative costs could run as high as three and four times.

Limits in Degrees of Freedom.  In cross-national research, one inevitably is studying only a few countries. Thus, the opportunities to discover systematic differences, trends, or associations across countries is very limited. Thus, for example, what can we realistically say about the effects of forms of consumer protection by countries on consumer satisfactions and complaining behavior when one is only studying, say, three countries? This, at minimum, would encourage the researcher to study countries known a priori to be at wide poles on key discussions. Unfortunately, with the homogenization of Western Europe (at least the northern and central portions), the amount of diversity, we suspect, is quite small. Our future efforts to promote studies in Communist or developing nations may prove much more fruitful on this count.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, we should like to offer 10 rules for managers of cross-national research projects:

1.  If at all possible, establish the project at a research base where there is a multilingual support staff, telephone access and "European telephone" skills.

2.  Ship needed materials from the U.S. in advance and arrange for forwarding documents for unanticipated needs.

3.  Involve research specialists from each of the target countries as a coordinated team of coordinated investigators and capitalize on their contributions at each stage of the research process.

4.  Schedule early and frequent meetings to build a sense of team cohesion, to encourage reinforcement of team members' progress and, of course, to increase the synergism of the design process.

5.  Adjust for the differing academic orientations of European academics by paying more attention to team motivation and by avoiding issues (such as language equivalences) in which they can become overly engrossed to the detriment of research progress.

6.  Expect there to be "reluctant coworkers" from time to time and develop tactics to learn the causes of their reluctance and then eliminate them.

7.  Expect a U-shaped "enthusiasm curve" to affect all project participants and plan to increase motivational efforts during the middle period doldrums.

8.  Be aware of differences in design possibilities and costs that may preclude exact replications of U.S. methodologies and involve agonizing trade-offs.

9.  Recognize that there are few degrees of freedom when studying only a few countries and lower your expectations about being able to show many system-level effects among countries.

10..Above all, do not be discouraged by the focus on the difficulties of undertaking cross-national research. Remember also that (a) the similarities to U.S. research design possibilities far outweigh the differences; (b) the differences themselves are diminishing; (c) cross-national research can significantly advance the fields of marketing and consumer behavior; and finally, (d) the cross-national experience can yield high personal rewards.

REFERENCES

Andreasen, Alan R. (1977), "A Taxonomy of Consumer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction Measures," Journal of Consumer Affairs, 12, 2, 311-322.

Andreasen, Alan R. (1978), "The Ghetto Marketing Life Cycle: A Case of Underachievement," Journal of Marketing Research, XV (February, 1978), 20-28.

Andreasen, Alan R. and Best, Arthur (1977), "Consumers Complain--Does Business Respond?" Harvard Business Review, 55, 4, 93-101.

Andreasen, Alan R. and Manning, Jean (1979), "Information Needs for Consumer Protection Planning," unpublished manuscript, University of Illinois, College of Commerce and Business Administration.

Day, Ralph L. and Landon, Laird E., Jr. (1976), "Collecting Comprehensive Complaint Data for Survey Research," in Beverlee B. Anderson (ed.), Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. III, Cincinnati: Association for Consumer Research, 263-268.

Handy, Charles R. and Pfaff, Martin (1975), Consumer Satisfaction with Food Products and Marketing Services, Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.

Hempel, Donald J. and McEwen, William J. (1976), "The Impact of Mobility and Social Integration on Information Seeking," in Beverlee B. Anderson (ed.), Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. III, Cincinnati: Association for Consumer Research, 341-347.

Professor "A" (1975), "The Compleat Marketing Academic,'' Marketing News, August 15, 1975, 15-16.

Warland, Rex; Herrmann, Robert 0.; and Willits, Jane (1975), "Dissatisfied Consumers: Who Gets Upset and Who Takes Action?" Journal of Consumer Affairs (Winter 1975), 148-163.

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