Abstract: Customers may always make complaints about the reduced price of the product they just purchased. From the perspective of the perceived price fairness, this paper explores the influencing mechanism of the size of price cutting on customer complaints in the context of after-purchase. The results of two groups of situational simulated experiments show that firstly, the perceived price fairness can mediate the impact of the size of price cutting on customer complaints; the larger size of price cutting (VS. smaller) would reduce the perceived price fairness, thus increase customer complaints. Secondly, when the time interval is longer (VS. shorter), the degree of impact of the size of price cutting on perceived price fairness will be reduced. Thirdly, when customers perceive higher controllability of price cutting (VS. lower), the regulating function of time interval in the influence of the size of price cutting on perceived price fairness will be reduced. These results have enriched the existing literatures with theoretical and practical significance.

Key words: size of price cutting; customer complaint; perceived price fairness; time interval; controllability of price cutting