Purpose Considering the scant scholarly research on elderly customers’ behaviors, this study aims to investigate elderly customers’ reactions to service failure. Additionally, it takes into account customers’ emotions and abilities to cope with stressful situations and achieve successful problem-solving complaining. In particular, future time perspective, wisdom and emotional intelligence were examined to delineate their impacts on the elderly’s responses to service failures. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected in a French city through mall-intercept interviewing. In total, 240 respondents participated, based on their retrospective service failure experience. PLS-SEM was used to analyze the data. Findings Both wisdom and emotional intelligence were found to directly and positively impact problem-solving complaining. Future time perspective, however, only had an indirect effect on problem-solving complaining through wisdom and emotional intelligence. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to shed some light on how elderly customers constructively react to service failures. To this end, it uses future time perspective, wisdom and emotional intelligence, as well as their interrelationships, to explain elderly customers’ problem-solving complaining.
