EMOTION, COMPENSATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM LUXURY HOTELS IN CHINA

Doris Chenguang Wu,Namho Chung,Zhaohan Hua,Hee Chung Chung 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2018 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2018 No.07

Introduction Although hotel employees are trained to deliver the best service, service failures may happen at any time because service is delivered by people to people (Susskind, 2002). Moreover, customers are more impressed by failed services than good services (Titz, 2001). According to the recovery paradox, customers have higher satisfaction level after experiencing a service failure if they receive satisfactory service recovery or compensation (McCollough & Bharadwaj, 1992). With the development of information communication technology and mobile device, customers can receive personalized services in recent days (Migacz, Zou, & Petrick, 2018). They also can easily share their experience on the online review platforms such as TripAdvisor, as well as select hotels based on shared online reviews (Liu & Park, 2015; Nieto-Gara?a, Mu?oz-Gallego, & Gonz?lez-Benito, 2017). Therefore, it is important for hotel managers to understand the mechanisms for service failure and recovery strategy. Thus, this study aims to examine the relationship between different emotion, customer engagement and brand loyalty under the context from the luxury hotels in China that different service failure compensation strategies are adopted. Particularly, the following two research questions are aimed to be addressed: First, do emotions (anger, regret and helplessness) significantly affect hotel brand loyalty through customer engagement? Second, does compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) significantly affect customer engagement and hotel brand loyalty based on customers’ emotions? The results of this study will benefit industry practitioners for formulating effective service failure recovery strategies. Theoretical frameworks and hypotheses development Stimulus-Organism-Response framework Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework is a commonly used form of behavioral research in which events or occurrences are said to be the result of certain stimulus leading to a certain response, following a set of organism processes (Kim & Lennon, 2013; Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). In behavioral research, the S-O-R theory explains “how” something happens and a variance theory describes “why” (Chiles, 2003). We adopted the S-O-R framework in an attempt to explain the effect of the compensation types (immediate vs. delayed) on hotel brand loyalty. In our research model, customer engagement is used an intervening construct on the causal relationship between emotions of customer (anger and regret as a retrospective emotions, helplessness as a prospective emotion) (Gelbrich, 2010) and hotel brand loyalty. Customer engagement is composed of multidimensional concepts of identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction (So, King, & Spark, 2014). Our model thus explains four basic processes of relationship impact on service failure as “stimulus”, emotions and customer engagement as “organism”, and hotel brand loyalty as “response”. This study also emphasizes compensation type as “moderator”. The model shows how to enhance the understanding of emotions that affect hotel brand loyalty through customer engagement based on the moderating effect of compensations type. Customer engagement It is important for a firm to manage customers to improve a firm’s performance. Customer management has transformed from customer transactions, to relationship marketing, and then engaging customers (Pansari and Kumar 2017). There are different definition about customer engagement and most of them define customer engagement as the activity of the customer toward the firm. For example, Pansari and Kumar (2017) define customer engagement as how customer contributes to the firm by “the mechanics of a customer’s value addition to the firm, either through direct or/and indirect contribution.” Vivek et al. (2012) define customer engagement as “the intensity of an individual’s offerings or organizational activities, which either the customer or the organization initiates” (p.127). It has been discussed that customer engagement has been affected by customer emotion and also has significant impact on behaviour intention and brand loyalty. However it has not been discussed under service failure context and when different types of compensation strategies are employed. This study therefore aims to explore this mechanics. Under hospitality context, So, King and Sparks (2014) develop five factors to measure customer engagement: identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction. Since this study also examine hotel guest customers, we adopt the scale of So et al. (2014) due to its comprehensiveness and consistent context. Service failure and emotion Customer emotion is an important antecedent of customer engagement. Currently firms have been shifted their focus from selling products to emotional connection with their customers (Pansari and Kumar 2017). Positive emotion may enhance customer engagement and thereby improve customer loyalty. But when service failure occurs, customers have different negative emotions including anger, frustration, helplessness, regret amongst others. These negative emotions of customers disappoint customers themselves and reduce customer loyalty. Different emotions may have different impact on customer engagement. Anger often refers to the attributes of others such as the service providers (Weiner, 1985) whereas regret often refers to the service failure locus of customer himself/herself such as the customer is regret to choose this service provider (Roseman, 1991). Both anger and regret refer to retrospective emotions and when customer would like to solve questions they may also negative emotion of helplessness which is called prospective emotions (Davidow, 2003; Gelbrich, 2010). This study aims to examine and differentiate the impact of two retrospective emotions of anger and regret and one prospective emotions of helplessness. The first hypothesis is therefore proposed: H1: Anger has negative impact on customer engagement. H2: Regret has negative impact on customer engagement. H3: Helplessness has negative impact on customer engagement. Service failure compensation Though service providers aim to deliver zero fault service, it is inevitable service failure may occur that may bring customers anger and dissatisfaction and damage the customer loyalty thereby. It is found that compensation is an effective way to comfort and delight the dissatisfied customers. Therefore, it is important to formulate effective compensation strategy when service failure occurs. Different compensation strategies such as monetary or nonmonetary (Fu et al. 2015), immediate or delayed compensation (Boshoff, 1997; Davidow, 2003), may be suitable to different contexts/situations. According to prospect theory, a customer is risk-reverse in case of gains. A customer may value products available now more than products obtained in the future due to the higher certainty of the former. Similarly, immediate compensation has less uncertainty than delayed compensation, and therefore is supposed to have higher value. Therefore customers with anger are assumed to have higher customer engagement when immediately compensated. On the other hand, regret customers attribute failure to himself/herself and therefore less expect compensation. The immediate compensation may lead to unfair and thereby less effect than delayed compensation. Therefore immediate compensation may not always be superior over the delayed one under different contexts. We therefore propose the second hypothesis: H1a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between anger and customer engagement. H2a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between regret and customer engagement. H3a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between helplessness and customer engagement. Brand loyalty Brand loyalty refers to the loyalty of a customer toward the brand both behaviourally and attitudinally (Dick and Basu 1994; Li and Petrick 2008; So, King, Sparks, and Wang 2013). It is a key goal of marketing activities, and its antecedents have been extensively examined such as satisfaction, perceived quality, received value, and brand trust, amongst others. Customer engagement, as the activity of a customer toward to a firm, is naturally viewed to influence brand loyalty. This study therefore adopts brand loyalty as the consequence of customer engagement. Furthermore, we would like to examine if compensation types have moderating effect between customer engagement and brand loyalty. We therefore propose below two hypotheses: H4: customer engagement has positive impact on brand loyalty. H4a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between customer engagement and brand loyalty. The research model is shown in Figure 1 where all hypotheses are demonstrated. Our research model is developed based on the S-O-R framework in which emotions are antecedent of customer engagement, and customer engagement impacts hotel brand loyalty. This research model also shows the moderating effects of compensation types has on causal relationships between the aforementioned constructs. Methodology Scenario design Scenario based questionnaire is designed to obtain quantitative data for analysis. Based on the interview with hotel managers/operators, one service failure scenario and two compensation scenarios (immediate and delayed) are designed. In-depth interviews with a couple of hotel managers and guests were conducted to verify the realisation of the scenarios formulated. The questionnaire begins with a screening question: in the previous 12 months have you ever had experience staying in a four- or five-star hotel? The survey would only continue if the answer is “yes”. Then the participant is asked to write down the name of this hotel and read the below service failure scenario thereby. Service failure scenario: Imagine you have checked into this hotel again. During your stay in hotel, you send your coat for laundry. It is a nice coat and you bought it a year ago with the price of 1000RMB. However when you collect the cleaned coat, you notice that there is a damage on your coat which makes you cannot dress this coat anymore. You therefore call the service counter for complain. Immediate and delayed compensation scenarios were designed as follows: Immediate compensation scenario: after 15 minutes, the duty manager of the hotel went to our hotel and expressed his sincere apology. You showed him about the damage and informed him the original price of your coat. The manager offered you the cash compensation with the original price of your coat and you agree with this. After half an hour you received 1000RMB cash as the compensation. Delayed compensation scenario: after 15 minutes, the duty manager of the hotel went to your room and expressed his sincere apology. You showed him about the damage and informed him the original price of your coat. The manager said according to the hotel policy, they need to check how this happened and confirm the price of your coat first before making the compensation for you. After two weeks you left the hotel, you received 1000RMB compensation which is transferred into your bank account directly. Participant emotion is measured after the participants read the service failure scenario and before they read the compensation scenario. Each participant is randomly assigned to be involved in one compensation scenario only. Customer engagement and hotel brand loyalty are measured after the compensation happened. Variable measurement Customer engagement is measured using 25-item scale developed by So et al. (2014) in which five factors are involved: identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction. Particularly, identification is measured by four attributes: “When someone criticizes this brand, it feels like a personal insult”, “When I talk about this brand, I usually say we rather than they”. “This brand’s successes are my successes”. “When someone praises this brand, it feels like a personal compliment”. Enthusiasm is measured by five attributes: “I am heavily into this brand”. “I am passionate about this brand” “I am enthusiastic about this brand” “I feel excited about this brand” “I love this brand”. Attention is measured by five attributes: “I like to learn more about this brand” “I pay a lot of attention to anything about this brand” “Anything related to this brand grabs my attention” “I concentrate a lot on this brand” “I like learning more about this brand” . Absorption is measured by five attributes: “When I am interacting with the brand, I forget everything else around me” “Time flies when I am interacting with the brand” “When I am interacting with brand, I get carried away” “When interacting with the brand, it is difficult to detach myself” “In my interaction with the brand, I am immersed” “When interacting with the brand intensely, I feel happy”. Interaction is measure by five attributes: “In general, I like to get involved in brand community discussions” “I am someone who enjoys interacting with likeminded others in the brand community” “I am someone who likes actively participating in brand community discussions” “In general, I thoroughly enjoy exchanging ideas with other people in the brand community” “I often participate in activities of the brand community”. Three emotion of anger, regret and helplessness are included as the measurement of emotion. Particularly, according to Gelbrich (2010), three attributes are adopted to measure anger “I would feel angry with the hotel/hotel employees”, “I would feel mad with the hotel/hotel employees”, and “I would feel furious about the hotel/hotel employees”. Three statements are employed to measure regret (Tsiros & Mittal 2000): “I would feel sorry for choosing this hotel”, “I regretted choosing this hotel”, and “I should have chosen another hotel”. Four statements are used to measure helplessness (Gelbrich 2010): “I would feel helpless”, “I would feel lost”, “I would feel defenceless”, and “I would feel stranded.” Five statements are used to measure brand loyalty (So, King, Sparks, & Wang 2013): “I would say positive things about this brand to other people.” “I would recommend this brand to someone who seeks my advice.” “I would encourage friends and relatives to do business with this brand.” “I would consider this brand my first choice to buy services.” “I would do more business with this brand in the next few years.” A seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (=disagree strongly) to 7 (=agree strongly) is adopted for all measurement. Data collection and analysis method In-depth interview with managers from upscale hotels and customers will be used to finalize scenarios. Opinions of academic experts will be used to revise variable measurements and questionnaires. Convenience sampling method will be adopted to obtain about 400 respondents who has experience of staying at four- or five-stars hotels in China in the previous year. Regarding with data analysis, Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used to test the hypotheses proposed. Expected results The manipulation check has been conducted to verify the scenarios designed. The negative relationship between emotions and customer engagement are expected and compensation timing (delayed or immediate) may moderate this relationship. Most importantly, it is expected that this moderating effect varies when different emotions and customer engagement are examined. Contributions The theoretical contributions have three folders. Firstly, this study first considers compensation timing into the examination of relationship between different negative emotions and customer engagement, after service failure occurs. Secondly, this study adopts stimulus-organism-response theory to explore the mechanism how service failure could be well recovered by relationships of different negative emotions, effective compensation type, customer engagement, and brand loyalty. Thirdly, this study applies second order factor for the measurement of customer engagement and also divides negative emotions into retrospective and prospective ones to shed light on customer engagement in the context of service failure and compensation. The practical implication of this study will benefit industry practitioners for their formulation of compensation strategies. Especially as the development of big data, hotel industry is able to adopt different strategies for individuals to maximize customer experience. The findings of this study could propose different strategies for different situations/individuals thereby.

서비스실패와 고객반응과의 관계에서 보상유형의 조절효과

우양,김정희 제주대학교 관광과경영경제연구소 2019 産經論集 Vol.39 No.3

Purpose – This paper proposes and tests a process of consumers to service failures that incorporates negative emotions and sympathy as the means to understand consumers' behavioral responses(demands for reparations and retaliatory behaviors). First, This paper will learn about the consumers negative emotions that occur depending on service failure. Second, Consumers who are on the negative situation are not only focus on the negative emotions they are also focus on the moral emotions. So this paper will learn about the compassion that occur depending on service failure. Third, When consumers in a negative situation they will not just care about the negative reaction, but also exist permissive and tolerant. This paper assists to identify the real reason about the different responses of customers when they are in failures situations. In addition, this paper will provide in-depth insight on customer response in service failure . Fourth, This paper will determine the emotions occur depending on service failure if they will leads to any action’s reaction. Research design, data, and methodology – To achieve this goal, research hypotheses and models were developed from the theoretical background and verified by questionnaires. This researcher developed a scenario and a questionnaire to meet the service failure situation, and responded to the questionnaire after reading the scenarios to consumers in Jeju area using the restaurant service. A total of 312 data were used for empirical analysis. Results – First, consumers who experienced service failure not only feel negative emotions to employees, but also feel sympathy to employees. Second, negative emotions and sympathy have different effect on consumers' behavioral responses. Consumers who feel negative emotions as a result of service failure are likely to negative word of mouth and switching action, while consumers who feel sympathy as a result of service failure are likely to weaken negative word of mouth and switching action. Third, the results show that the compensation type has no significant moderating effects on consumers' behavioral responses. Conclusions - If a service failure occurs at the service site, the service marketing manager must manage not only the off-line but also an online customer who is dissatisfied with the purpose of retaliation for the failure of the service.

The Moderating Effect of Compensation Type on Relationship between Service Failure and Customer Responses

Yang Yu(우양),Jung-He Kim(김정희) 제주대학교 관광과경영경제연구소 2019 産經論集 Vol.39 No.3

Purpose - This paper proposes and tests a process of consumers to service failures that incorporates negative emotions and sympathy as the means to understand consumers behavioral responses(demands for reparations and retaliatory behaviors). First, This paper will learn about the consumers negative emotions that occur depending on service failure. Second, Consumers who are on the negative situation are not only focus on the negative emotions they are also focus on the moral emotions. So this paper will learn about the compassion that occur depending on service failure. Third, When consumers in a negative situation they will not just care about the negative reaction, but also exist permissive and tolerant. This paper assists to identify the real reason about the different responses of customers when they are in failures situations. In addition, this paper will provide in-depth insight on customer response in service failure . Fourth, This paper will determine the emotions occur depending on service failure if they will leads to any action’s reaction. Research design, data, and methodology – To achieve this goal, research hypotheses and models were developed from the theoretical background and verified by questionnaires. This researcher developed a scenario and a questionnaire to meet the service failure situation, and responded to the questionnaire after reading the scenarios to consumers in Jeju area using the restaurant service. A total of 312 data were used for empirical analysis. Results - First, consumers who experienced service failure not only feel negative emotions to employees, but also feel sympathy to employees. Second, negative emotions and sympathy have different effect on consumers behavioral responses. Consumers who feel negative emotions as a result of service failure are likely to negative word of mouth and switching action, while consumers who feel sympathy as a result of service failure are likely to weaken negative word of mouth and switching action. Third, the results show that the compensation type has no significant moderating effects on consumers behavioral responses. Conclusions - If a service failure occurs at the service site, the service marketing manager must manage not only the off-line but also an online customer who is dissatisfied with the purpose of retaliation for the failure of the service.

소셜커머스 서비스 실패에 따른 소비자의 신뢰도 변화 - 서비스 실패의 주체와 실패의 심각성 및 브랜드 에쿼티의 상호작용을 중심으로 -

이지은,최인석 한국소비자·광고심리학회 2011 한국심리학회지 소비자·광고 Vol.12 No.4

The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of the severity of service failure, the main source of service failure, and the equity of social commerce companies on consumers’ trust change toward social commerce companies. In addition, this study is to examine the moderating effect of service failure seriousness and equity level of social commerce companies on change in consumers’ trust depending on the source of service failure. The results showed that seriousness of service failure and the equity level of social commerce companies significantly affect the change in consumer trust. When the service failure is caused by social commerce companies and service failure is severe, it was found that consumer trust change was bigger toward social commerce companies with high equity compared to those with lower equity. However, when service failure severity is low, there was no significant change in comsumer trust. On the other hand, when the source of service failure is service provider and service failure severity is high, the change in consumers trust was not signifiant. However, when service failure severity is low, the change in trust level was significantly higher for social commerce companies with high brand equity. 미국 그루폰(Groupon)의 성공 이후 미국뿐만 아니라 전 세계적으로 소셜커머스 붐이 일어나고 있다. 국내에만 400~500개의 소셜커머스 업체가 생겨났으며 소셜커머스 시장은 시간이 갈수록 커지고 있는 추세이다. 국내 소셜커머스 시장의 도입 시기는 최근이지만 소셜커머스 서비스 실패 사례 및 소비자 피해 사례는 급증하고 있으며 이슈화 되고 있다. 따라서 소셜커머스 서비스 실패에 대한 집중적 연구의 필요성이 제기되고 있다. 소셜커머스의 서비스 유형은 기존의 전자상거래의 서비스와는 차별화되는데, 이는 소셜커머스만의 독특한 비즈니스 모델에 기인한다. 소셜커머스는 서비스나 상품을 소비자들에게 광고하고 이에 대한 할인쿠폰을 판매하는 소셜커머스 업체와 실질적으로 그 상품이나 서비스를 제공하는 서비스 업체로 구성된다. 따라서 서비스 실패는 소셜커머스 업체의 실패와 서비스를 제공하는 업체의 실패로 나누어지며 두 개 업체의 서비스 수준이 전체 서비스의 질을 결정하게 된다. 본 연구의 목적은 서비스 실패의 심각성, 실패의 주체 및 소셜커머스 업체의 브랜드 에쿼티가 각각 소비자의 소셜커머스 업체에 대한 신뢰변화에 미치는 영향을 알아보고, 서비스 실패의 주체에 따른 소비자의 신뢰 변화에 실패의 심각성과 소셜커머스 업체의 에쿼티의 조절 영향을 알아보는 것이다. 연구 결과, 서비스 실패의 심각성과 소셜커머스 업체의 브랜드 에쿼티가 높을수록 서비스 실패 후 소셜커머스 업체에 대한 소비자의 신뢰는 낮아지는 것으로 나타났다. 실패의 주체가 소셜커머스 업체일 경우, 실패의 심각성이 높을 때는 낮은 에쿼티를 가진 소셜커머스 업체에 비해 높은 에쿼티를 가진 소셜커머스 업체에 대한 소비자의 신뢰변화가 더 큰 것으로 나타났다. 반면에 실패의 심각성이 낮을 때는 소셜커머스업체의 브랜드 에쿼티에 따른 소비자의 신뢰변화 차이는 유의하지 않은 것으로 나타났다. 한편 서비스 실패의 주체가 서비스 제공업체일 경우, 실패의 심각성이 높을 때는 소셜커머스 업체의 에쿼티에 따른 소비자의 신뢰 변화 차이는 유의하지 않은 것으로 나타났지만 실패의 심각성이 낮을 때는 낮은 브랜드 에쿼티를 가진 소셜커머스 업체보다 높은 에쿼티를 가진 소셜커머스 업체에 대한 소비자의 신뢰변화는 더 큰 것으로 나타났다. 이상의 실증결과를 바탕으로 실무적 시사점 및 향후 연구방향에 관하여 논의하였다.

fsQCA를 활용한 Airbnb 고객의 서비스 실패 귀인에 대한 연구 : 미국 고객 데이터를 대상으로

김수연 한국고객만족경영학회 2024 고객만족경영연구 Vol.26 No.1

Airbnb에서 서비스 실패가 일어났을 때, 효과적인 서비스 회복을 제공하기 위해서는 서비스 전달 과정에 참여하는 각 주체들에게(Airbnb, 호스트, 고객) 고객이 어떻게 실패 귀인을 하는가에 대한 이해가 필요하다. 실패 귀인을 누구에게 어떻게 하는가에 따라, 기대되는 서비스 회복이 달라질 수 있기 때문이다. 그럼에도 불구하고, 기존 연구들은 효과적인 서비스 회복 전략에만 집중해 왔다. 즉, 왜 그러한 전략들이 효과적인가에 대한 근본적인 메커니즘에 대한 연구가 부족한 실정이다. 이에 본 연구는 공유 서비스, 서비스 실패/회복 관련 기존 문헌을 바탕으로 서비스 실패 및 고객 특성에 해당하는 3가지 원인 조건 (①서비스 실패 심각도, ②성별, ③연령)과 서비스 실패 귀인에 해당하는 3가지 결과 조건 (①Airbnb에 대한 실패 귀인, ②호스트에 대한 실패 귀인, ③고객 자신에 대한 실패 귀인)을 정의하였다. Airbnb를 사용해 본 미국인을 대상으로 수집한 데이터를 활용하여 fsQCA를 수행한 결과, 도출한 시사점은 다음과 같다. 첫째, Airbnb는 서비스 실패 심각도가 높을 때, 서비스 회복에 적극적으로 관여해야 하며, 둘째, 호스트는 서비스 실패 심각도와 관계없이 서비스 회복에 적극적으로 관여해야 하고, 마지막으로, Airbnb와 호스트 모두, 남성 고객에게 관심을 기울여야 한다는 점이다. 본 연구의 결과는 Airbnb에서 실패가 일어났을 때, 각 주체에 대한 고객의 귀인에 대한 이해를 제공하여, 효과적인 서비스 회복 전략을 도출하는데 도움을 줄 수 있다는 점에서 학문적, 실무적 시사점을 갖는다. To provide effective service recovery in the event of a service failure at Airbnb, each actor involved in the service delivery process (Airbnb, hosts, and customers) needs to understand how customers attribute failure. This is because how and to whom a failure is attributed can affect the expected service recovery. Nevertheless, existing research has focused only on effective service recovery strategies, i.e., there is a lack of research on the underlying mechanisms of why these strategies are effective. Based on the existing literature on shared services and service failure/recovery, this study defines three causal conditions for service failure and customer characteristics (1) service failure severity, (2) gender, and (3) age, and three outcome conditions for service failure attribution (1) failure attribution to Airbnb, (2) failure attribution to the host, and (3) failure attribution to the customer himself. Using data collected from Americans who have used Airbnb, we conducted a fsQCA and found the following implications. First, Airbnb should be actively involved in service recovery when the severity of the failure is high; second, hosts should be actively involved in service recovery regardless of the severity of the failure; and finally, both Airbnb and hosts should pay attention to male customers. The findings of this study have both academic and practical implications as they provide an understanding of customer attributions to each actor in the event of a failure at Airbnb, which can help to inform effective service recovery strategies.

Assessing the Damage

Venessa Martin Funches,William Foxx,Eun Joo Park,Eun Young Kim 한국마케팅과학회 2010 마케팅과학연구 Vol.20 No.2

This study attempts to examine the influence that negative WOM (NWOM) has in an online context. It specifically focuses on the impact of the service failure description and the perceived intention of the communication provider on consumer evaluations of firm competence, attitude toward the firm, positive word of mouth and behavioral intentions. Studies of communication persuasiveness focus on “who says what; to whom; in which channel; with what effect (Chiu 2007).” In this research study, we examine electronic web posting, particularly focusing on two aspects of ‘what”: the level of service failure communicated and perceived intention of the individual posting. It stands to reason electronic NWOM that appears to be trying to damage a product’s or firm’s reputation will be viewed as more biased and will thus be considered as less credible. According to attribution theory, people search for the causes of events especially those that are negative and unexpected (Weiner 2006). Hennig-Thurau and Walsh (2003) state “since the reader has only limited knowledge and trust of the author of an online articulation the quality of the contribution could be expected to serve as a potent moderator of the articulation-behavior relationship. We therefore posit the following hypotheses: H1. Subjects exposed to electronic NWOM describing a high level of service failure will provide lower scores on measures of (a) firm competence, (b) attitude toward the firm, (c) positive word of mouth, and (d) behavioral intention than will subjects exposed to electronic NWOM describing a low level of service failure. H2. Subjects exposed to electronic NWOM with a warning intent will provide lower scores on measures of (a) firm competence, (b) attitude toward the firm, (c) positive word of mouth, and (d) behavioral intention than will subjects exposed to electronic NWOM with a vengeful intent. H3. Level of service failure in electronic NWOM will interact with the perceived intention of the electronic NWOM, such that there will be a decrease in mean response on measures of (a) firm competence, (b) attitude toward the firm, (c) positive word of mouth, and (d) behavioral intention from electronic NWOM with a warning intent to a vengeful intent. The main study involved a 2 (service failure severity) x 2 (NWOM with warning versus vengeful intent) factorial experiment. Stimuli were presented to subjects online using a mock online web posting. The scenario described a service failure associated with non-acceptance of a gift card in a brick-and-mortar retail establishment. A national sample was recruited through an online research firm. A total of 113 subjects participated in the study. A total of 104 surveys were analyzed. The scenario was perceived to be realistic with 92.3% giving the scenario a greater than average response. Manipulations were satisfactory. Measures were pre-tested and validated. Items were analyzed and found reliable and valid. MANOVA results found the multivariate interaction was not significant, allowing our interpretation to proceed to the main effects. Significant main effects were found for post intent and service failure severity. The post intent main effect was attributable to attitude toward the firm, positive word of mouth and behavioral intention. The service failure severity main effect was attributable to all four dependent variables: firm competence, attitude toward the firm, positive word of mouth and behavioral intention. Specifically, firm competence for electronic NWOM describing high severity of service failure was lower than electronic NWOM describing low severity of service failure. Attitude toward the firm for electronic NWOM describing high severity of service failure was lower than electronic NWOM describing low severity of service failure. Positive word of mouth for electronic NWOM describing high severity of service failure was lower than electronic NWOM describing low severity of service failure.

서비스 실패의 특성 요인과 고객용서 -항공서비스 관점을 중심으로-

이원준 ( Won-jun Lee ),하대용 ( Dae-yong Ha ) 한국항공경영학회 2016 한국항공경영학회지 Vol.14 No.4

Service failures and recovery efforts of an airline carrier can have a profound effect on customer``s attitude and behavior toward a company. Airline carriers are faced with many challenges affecting their market success, and one potential challenge is the fact that they are always susceptible to service failure regardless with their prevention efforts. Service failure results in long-term grudge holding, vandalism, anti-brand blog, negative W.O.M., and increases in rare physical abuse of service personnel. Therefore, service recovery is recognized as a significant determinant of positive customer attitude and behavior. In particular, this study focuses on the importance of consumer forgiveness in the recovery process. Consumer forgiveness is the overcoming of negative experiences and judgement toward the offender and leads to the true emotional service recovery. To date, research has not extensively examined service failure and consumer forgiveness and has rarely been looked at empirically. This study investigates the effect of various characteristics of service failure and their relationships with customer forgiveness. Also the relationships between customer forgiveness and customer behaviors are analyzed. Based on the previous researches, this research proposes an empirical model for understanding the mediating role of consumer forgiveness. Data were collected from 543 college students initially and only 269 samples with actual service failure experiences were used to prove the research model. Reliability and validity of the data were analyzed through Cronbach``s alpha score and factor analysis. And the structural equation model was adopted to test the hypothesized relationships. The findings indicate that affective repair, relationship asset significantly influences customer forgiveness. Functional repair gives influence to consumer forgiveness negatively. However, severity of service failure``s influence was not supported. Forgiving customer``s relationships with the airline carriers were strengthened. Customer forgiveness gives a positive effect of post-trust and negative effect to negative W.O.M. The findings also indicate partly that the decision to forgive airline service provider following a transgression is moderate by accountability style. The findings provide a new perspective on service failure and recovery process and highlight the importance of consumer forgiveness.

What Determines Tourist Satisfaction After Service Failure: Three-way Interactions Among Service Recovery, Tourist Restraint, and Service Failure Severity

우징원,김고운 한국무역학회 2024 Journal of Korea trade Vol.28 No.4

Purpose – The role of service recovery on customer satisfaction following a service failure encounter has not yet been fully explored,in the Korean tourism context. Given the relevance between tourism and culture, cultural factors embedded in tourists may serve as boundary conditions that impact service recovery performance. Also, serious service failure often limits the effectiveness of recovery. Nevertheless, these aspects have been largely overlooked in previous studies. This study aims to (1) investigate the effects of service recovery on post-recovery tourist satisfaction and (2) examine the potential moderating effects of the tourism. Design/Methodology – Using a questionnaire survey, this study conducted a moderated moderation analysis, suggesting two conditional effects: tourist restraint orientation and service failure severity as potential moderators. Findings – The findings indicate a positive association between service recovery and post-recovery tourist satisfaction, which is stronger for tourists with higher levels of restraint. Further, the severity of the service failure influences how much tourist restraint moderates the situation. Specifically, service failure severity enhances the inf luence of tourist restraint, positively moderating the service recovery and post-recovery tourist satisfaction relationship. Originality/value – Despite tourism’s distinct context, research and evidence on the effects of service recovery and the potential factors that inf luence post-recovery tourist satisfaction in tourism settings have been relatively scarce. This study contributes to a more accurate understanding of service recovery in tourism by identifying the three-way interaction effects of tourist restraint and service failure severity on the relationship between service recovery and post-recovery tourist satisfaction.

서비스실패 상황에서 복구수행이 복구만족을 통하여 전환행동과 부정적 구전에 미치는 영향: 정의 직접효과 및 조절효과

김선희,박종희,김도일 한국마케팅관리학회 2016 마케팅관리연구 Vol.21 No.3

This study primarily aimed to apply Korean consumer’s Cheong to service failure. Cheong is the most common and sociocultural emotion governing Korean’s psychological experiences. In the existing service marketing research, Cheong has been known to have an positive impact on customer attitude such as satisfaction, reuse intention, and loyalty. But in general, consumers satisfied with service quality have reuse intention or loyalty without Cheong. So Cheong is more important when service failure occurs. Cheong makes persons to positively perceive the other party’s weak points or wrong doings. Therefore, Cheong is likely to affect the company of service failure positively. For this purpose we investigated the effects of service provider-customer Cheong switching behavior and negative word-of-mouth in service failure. Also we examined the interaction effect of recovery satisfaction and Cheong on switching behavior and negative word-of-mouth. We conducted a survey with consumers that had used specific service shops and experienced services failure within last three months. To test research hypotheses, we used structural equation modeling and MANOVA analysis. The results were as follows. First, customer’s Cheong toward the service provider has a negative impact on switching behavior. And switching behavior was confirmed to decrease by Cheong. As Cheong has a positive effect on maintaining the relationship of service provider and customer, it does in the situation of service failure. Second, the results indicate that the group with high level of Cheong has lower switching behavior and negative word-of mouth than the group of low level Cheng. And switching behavior gap and negative word-of mouth gap in satisfaction are larger in low Cheong than in high Cheong. So we confirmed the interaction effect of Cheong on recovery satisfaction. Third, service recovery has a positive effect on recovery satisfaction. And service failure has a negative effect on recovery satisfaction, switching behavior, and negative word-of-mouth. Regarding theoretical implications of this study, Cheong-related existing research of the service failure found its effects. However, existing studies used the scenarios using an experimental research methods or critical incident technique(CIT), but this study conducted an empirical survey. In addition, this study has practical implications for service organization’s recovery strategy and customer relation management. 본 연구는 한국소비자의 정 감정을 서비스실패 상황에 적용하는 것을 주요 목적으로 하고 있다. 그동안 서비스마케팅에서 정은 고객만족, 재이용의도, 애호도 등 소비자태도에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 변수로 알려져 왔다. 그러나 일반적으로 서비스품질에 만족한 고객은 정의 개입이 없더라도 재이용의도나 애호도를 가질 수 있기 때문에 평상시의 서비스구매 상황보다 서비스실패 상황에서 오히려 정의 중요성이 더 높아질 수 있다. 정의 특성으로 상대방이 실수하거나 마음에 들지 않는 행동을 했을 때 이해하고 수용하는 것을 들 수 있는데, 이러한 특징에 의해 서비스실패 상황에서 서비스제공자-고객 간 정이 기업에게 긍정적으로 작용할 가능성이 있을 것으로 보았다. 본 연구는 실제로 서비스실패를 경험한 고객을 대상으로 정이 전환행동, 부정적 구전에 미치는 효과를 검토하였다. 그리고 복구 후 만족과 전환행동, 부정적 구전 사이에서 정이 조절효과를 가지는가를 검토하였다. 실증분석 결과, 서비스제공자에 대한 고객의 정은 전환행동에 부(-)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타나 정이 서비스실패 상황에서 전환행동을 억제시키는 변수임을 제시하고 있다. 또한 정은 복구만족과 전환행동, 복구만족과 부정적 구전 사이에서 조절작용을 하는 것으로 나타났다. 정이 높은 집단이나 낮은 집단 모두 복구만족이 높을 때는 전환행동과 부정적 구전을 적게 하고, 복구만족이 낮을 때는 전환행동과 부정적 구전을 많이 한다. 정의 조절효과는 정이 높은 집단이 낮은 집단에 비해 그 격차가 적다는 점을 시사한다. 본 연구는 서비스실패 상황에서 복구전략과 정, 고객행동의 관계를 살펴봄으로써 기존의 정 연구를 확장하였다는 점에서 이론적인 의의를 찾을 수 있다. 또한 서비스실패를 만회하기 위해 많은 노력을 경주하고 있는 서비스기업에게 실무적 시사점을 제공하고 있다.

서비스실패에 대한 소비자의 2단계 반응 연구

이재진(Lee, Jae Jin) 한국마케팅학회 2014 마케팅연구 Vol.29 No.5

서비스실패는 충성도 높은 고객을 잃게 할 정도로 위험하지만 현실적으로 거의 모든 서비스기업에서 불가피하게 발생하는 상황이기 때문에 서비스실패의 연구는 다양하게 이루어져야 한다. 그동안 서비스마케팅 분야에서 서비스실패에 관한 여러 연구들이 진행되었는데 본 연구는 두 가지 측면에서 차별점이 있다. 첫째, 서비스실패는 최초의 실패와 서비스회복 실패라는 2단계로 구분 할 수 있다. 이 두 단계는 우리의 실생활에서 흔히 각각 개별적으로 경험하는 것이고 각 단계에서 소비자의 지각과 그에 따른 반응이 다른 만큼 구분하여 연구되어야 한다. 둘째, 서비스실패가 발생하는 상황은 신규 서비스가 아닌 이상 대개의 경우 소비자의 선호상황이 존재한다. 그러므로 서비스실패 연구는 서비스브랜드 선호상황을 함께 고려하는 것이 현실적인 접근이라 할 수 있다. 이에 본 연구는 서비스실패상황을 최초 서비스실패상황과 이후 이어지는 서비스회복실패의 2단계로 구분 하였고 브랜드선호상황을 선호수준이 더 높은 브랜드애착과 상대적으로 선호수준이 낮은 호의적인 브랜드태도로 구분하였으며 브랜드애착과 브랜드태도 간 유의한 상호작용 효과를 기대할 수 있는 성별 변수를 함께 고려하여 연구하였다. 연구결과는 우선 서비스실패 시에 호의적 브랜드태도를 가진 소비자가 브랜드애착을 가진 소비자에 비해 브랜드전환 의도가 더 높았고(가설1) 브랜드태도 상황에서 여성이 남성에 비해 브랜드전환의도가 더 컸으며(가설2) 브랜드애착 상황에서는 남성이 여성에 비해 브랜드전환의도가 더 컸다(가설3). 이로 인해 브랜드태도와 브랜드애착간에 성별에 의한 반전효과를 확인할 수 있었다. 또한 서비스 회복에 대한 공정성을 지각하면 브랜드애착의 소비자가 상대적으로 더 만족하였으며(가설4) 2단계 실패상황인 서비스 회복 공정성이 낮을 때 는 브랜드애착의 소비자 중 여성이 상대적으로 브랜드전환의도가 더 컸다(가설6). 본 연구를 통해 서비스실패를 2단계로 구분하고 선호의 수준과 성별의 상호작용을 연구함으로써 학문적, 실무적 시사점을 제시하고자 한다. Generally, service failure is so dangerous that a company could lose its high-loyalty customers. But this service failure may happen in almost all service companies. So researches for service failure are very important. Until now, a variety of studies have been done. But there are two different points in this study. First, there is a definite separation of service failure between the first service failure and following service recovery failure. Second, there should certainly be brand preference situation if the service, being delivered, is not newly introduced in the market. Therefore, studies of service failure along with a service brand preference can be a realistic approach. In this study, a service failure situation was divided into two phases of service. On the other hand, brand preference was classified into brand attachment and brand attitude. In addition to this, gender was also considered. To sum up the results of the study, first, in the situation of service failure, consumers with a favorable attitude toward the service brand show stronger intention to switch brands than those with brand attachment(Hypothesis 1). In situation of brand attitude, women have stronger brand switching intention(Hypothesis 2). Contrary to this, in situation of brand attachment, men, compared to women, also have greater brand switching intention(Hypothesis 3). In addition, if perceiving equity of service recovery, consumers with brand attachment were relatively more satisfied (Hypothesis 4). Moreover, if not perceiving equity of service recovery, female consumers with brand attachment show relatively greater degree of brand switching intention(Hypothesis 6). This study should be able to propose academic and practical implications by studying the two phases of service failure and interaction effect of gender and the level of preference.