Counterfactual Thinking in Response to Service Failure

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study explored the effects of counterfactual thinking on customer’s behavioral responses (i.e., regret and disappointment) to a failed service encounter. Where, counterfactual thinking enables people to generate imaginable alternatives which would undo what has actually happened. Regret stems from wrong decisions and is typically associated with self-blame. Disappointment, however, stems from disconfirmed expectancies and is typically associated with blaming others or circumstances. Researcher expected to generate of counterfactual thinking, regret and disappointment in the service failure. Respondents are undergraduate students of department of hotel management of Cheongju University, Chungbuk, Republic of Korea. In a vignette study, following service failure were manipulated to observe the participants’ counterfactual response; a number of counterfactual thinking (a number of counterfactual alternative generated), and subsequent emotional reactions (regret and disappointment). 200 student samples analyzed by T-test, Repeated Measure ANOVA. The results indicated that the generated number of counterfactual thinking alternatives. And the regret and disappointment are related to counterfactual thinking in response to service failure. The results of this study discussed research implications and limitations.