Does Relationship Matter? Service Failure, Attribution and Recovery

• Main Authors: Liang-Yu Lin, 林良砡
• Other Authors: Fan-Yun Pai
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/19423824735990972024

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 企業管理學系 === 101 === Service failure is inevitable. A better understanding of how relationship level influences consumer’s response to service failure and recovery is an important topic for academics and practitioners. This study investigates the relationships among consumer relationship level, failure attributions (i.e., stability and controllability), service failure severity, perceived equity, and compensation and consumer’s future behavior in the context of restaurant and online shopping. This study using equity theory investigated the importance of consumers’ entire history of shared interactions with service organizations. Specifically, the study empirically tested the different consequence of compensation by manipulating the consumer relationship level. Consumer relationship level motivates consumers to follow different attribution process to judge severity of service failure and determines consumers’ perceived equity. Moreover, consumers’ perceived equity can influence consumers' future behavioral intention, especially the future relationship continuity between consumers and the service organizations. Findings from two studies indicate that when additional compensation is offered after a service failure, perceived equity was found to be increased regardless of the consumer’s relationship level. The influence of compensation on perceived equity thus varies as a function of relationship level. Consumers with low relationship level are more sensitive to compensation. Furthermore, enhanced equity perception automatically means that corresponding future relationship continuity is also enhanced. The results further demonstrate that controllability attributions influence service failure severity, and service failure severity has a negative impact on the perceived equity of the exchange, which mediates the effectiveness of compensation as a recovery effort. Managerial implications for restaurants and online shopping context are provided and discussed.