Consumers' Experiences, Opinions, Attitudes, Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Complaining Behavior with Vending Machines

Abstract

This study is the first of its kind to report, based on consumer survey data, consumers' usage behavior, and opinions and attitudes toward the services rendered by food and beverage vending machines. Consumer satisfaction and complaint behavior are also investigated. The results reveal that consumers consider vending machines as quite useful, beneficial, important, and meaning a lot to them. However, consumers generally give tepid evaluations about vending machine services, and their level of satisfaction starkly contrasts with their high involvement. Their experience with the vending machine is not up to par with comparable retail store shopping experiences. The inadequate system of requesting refunds and filing complaints, a chronic source of consumer dissatisfaction, emerged as the most serious drawback of vending machine services. Managerial implications of this and other findings, along with future research issues are discussed.