The study examines politeness strategies used by customers in raising issues and the negotiation strategies used by an organization to handle customers' problems in their official online discussion rooms. This qualitative study chose a mega-corporation technology organization’s official discussion room. The researchers analyzed the discussions comprising questions, customer issues, and responses from the organization’s personnel. 20 online customer complaints posted via discussions.apple.com were investigated using the components of politeness strategies and negotiation strategies used by the organization’s personnel using the purposive sampling method. The results indicated the four politeness strategies used by the customers in the discussion room are apparent. The most frequent politeness strategy used by customers is positive politeness. Besides, it is also revealed that the four negotiation strategies from the responses of the organization’s personnel in the discussion room are evident. The most frequent negotiation strategy used by the organization in handling the customers’ issues is using a simple and accessible language strategy. The study concludes with recommendations on expanding the data sample and using other conventional online platforms in new areas for future studies of strategic politeness and negotiation in issue-solving.
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In-Text Citation: (Kaur et al., 2022)
To Cite this Article: Kaur, K., Suppiah, P. C., Arumugam, N., & Idham, M. (2022). Politeness and Negotiation Strategies in Handling Customers: Conflict-Resolution. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(8), 957– 971.
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