This research investigated how customers’ relationships with a service organization affect their reactions to service failure and recovery. Our conceptual model proposed that customer-organizational relationships help to shape customers’ attributions and expectations when service failures occur. The empirical results showed that customers with higher expectations of relationship continuity had lower service recovery expectations after a service failure and also attributed that failure to a less stable cause. Both the lower recovery expectations and the lower stability attributions were associated with greater satisfaction with the service performance after the recovery. These effects appeared to be key processes by which relationships buffer service organizations when service failures occur.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anderson, Erin and Barton A. Weitz. 1989. “Determinants of Continuity in Conventional Industrial Channel Dyads.” Marketing Science8 (fall): 310-323.
2.
Anderson, Eugene W. and Mary W. Sullivan. 1993. “The Antecedents and Consequences of Customer Satisfaction for Firms.” Marketing Science12 (spring): 125-143.
3.
Anderson, James C. and David W. Gerbing 1988. “Structural Equation Modeling in Practice: A Review and Recommended Two-Step Approach.” Psychological Bulletin103 (3): 411-423.
4.
Bell, Chip R. and R.E. Zemke. 1987. “Service Breakdown: The Road to Recovery.” Management Review76 (10): 32-35.
5.
Bendapudi, Neeli and Leonard L. Berry. 1997. “Customers’ Motivations for Maintaining Relationships With Service Providers.” Journal of Retailing73 (1): 15-37.
6.
Bentler, P.M. and Douglas Bonett. 1980. “Significance Tests and Goodness of Fit in the Analysis of Covariance Structures.” Psychological Bulletin88 (3): 588-606.
7.
Berry, Leonard L. 1980. “Services Marketing Is Different.” Business Magazine30 (May/June): 24-29.
8.
—. 1995. “Relationship Marketing of Services—Growing Interest, Emerging Perspectives.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science23 (4): 236-245.
9.
Bitner, Mary Jo. 1995. “Building Service Relationships: It’s All About Promises.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science23 (4): 246-251.
10.
—. 1990. “Evaluating Service Encounters: The Effects of Physical Surroundings and Employee Responses.” Journal of Marketing54 (April): 69-82.
11.
— and Amy R. Hubbert. 1994. “Encounter Satisfaction Versus Overall Satisfaction Versus Quality: The Customer’s Voice.” In Service Quality: New Directions in Theory and Practice. Eds. Roland T. Rust and Richard L. Oliver. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 72-94.
12.
—, Bernard H. Booms, and Mary Stanfield Tetreault. 1990. “The Service Encounter: Diagnosing Favorable and Unfavorable Incidents.” Journal of Marketing54 (January): 71-84.
13.
Boulding, William, Ajay Kalra, Richard Staelin, and Valarie A. Zeithaml. 1993. “A Dynamic Process Model of Service Quality: From Expectations to Behavioral Intentions.” Journal of Marketing Research30 (February): 7-27.
14.
Browne, Michael W. and Robert Cudeck. 1993. “Alternative Ways of Assessing Model Fit.” In Testing Structural Equation Models. Eds. Kenneth A. Bollen and J. Scott Long. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 136-162.
15.
Cadotte, Ernest R., Robert B. Woodruff, and Roger L. Jenkins. 1987. “Expectations and Norms in Models of Customer Satisfaction.” Journal of Marketing Research24 (August): 305-314.
16.
Churchill, Gilbert A., Jr. and Carol Surprenant. 1982. “An Investigation Into the Determinants of Consumer Satisfaction.” Journal of Marketing Research19 (November): 491-504.
17.
Dwyer, Robert F., Paul H. Schurr, and Sejo Oh. 1987. “Developing Buyer-Seller Relationships.” Journal of Marketing51 (April): 11-27.
18.
Folkes, Valarie S. 1984. “Consumer Reactions to Product Failure: An Attributional Approach.” Journal of Consumer Research10 (March): 398-409.
19.
—, Susan Koletsky, and John Graham. 1987. “A Field Study of Causal Inferences and Consumer Reaction: The View From the Airport.” Journal of Consumer Research14 (March): 548-565.
20.
Frieze, Irene and Bernard Weiner. 1971. “Cue Utilization and Attributional Judgments for Success and Failure.” Journal of Personality39: 591-605.
21.
Ganesan, Shankar. 1994. “Determinants of Long-Term Orientation in Buyer-Seller Relationships.” Journal of Marketing58 (April): 1-19.
22.
Goodman, Paul S., Mark Fichman, F. Javier Lerch, and Pamela R. Snyder. 1995. “Customer-Firm Relationships, Involvement, and Customer Satisfaction.” Academy of Management Journal38 (5): 1310-1324.
23.
Goodwin, Cathy, and Ivan Ross. 1992. “Consumer Responses to Service Failures: Influence of Procedural and Interactional Fairness Perceptions.” Journal of Business Research25: 149-163.
24.
Gronroos, Christian. 1988. “Service Quality: The Six Criteria of Good Perceived Service Quality.” Review of Business9 (winter): 10-13.
25.
—. 1990. “Relationship Approach to Marketing in Service Contexts: The Marketing and Organizational Behavior Interface.” Journal of Business Research20: 3-11.
26.
Gruen, Thomas W., John O. Summers, and Frank Acito. 2000. “Relationship Marketing Activities, Commitment, and Membership Behaviors in Professional Associations.” Journal of Marketing64 (July): 34-49.
27.
Gutek, Barbara A. 1995. The Dynamics of Service: Reflections on the Changing Nature of Customer/Provider Interactions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
28.
Hamilton, V. Lee. 1980. “Intuitive Psychologist or Intuitive Lawyer? Alternative Models of the Attribution Process.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology39: 767-772.
29.
Heider, Fritz. 1958. The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. New York: John Wiley.
30.
Hoffman, K. Douglas and John E.G. Bateson. 1997. Essentials of Services Marketing. Fort Worth, TX: Dryden.
31.
Kahneman, Daniel and Amos Tversky. 1979. “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decisions Under Risk.” Econometrica47: 263-291.
32.
Keaveney, Susan M. 1995. “Customer Switching Behavior in Service Industries: An Exploratory Study.” Journal of Marketing59 (April): 71-82.
33.
Kelley, Scott W.K. and Mark A. Davis. 1994. “Antecedents to Customer Expectations for Service Recovery.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science22 (1): 52-61.
34.
—, Douglas Hoffman, and Mark A. Davis. 1993. “A Typology of Retail Failures and Recoveries.” Journal of Retailing69 (winter): 429-452.
35.
Kolodinsky, Jane. 1993. “Complaints, Redress, and Subsequent Purchases of Medical Services by Dissatisfied Consumers.” Journal of Consumer Policy16 (2): 193-214.
36.
LaBarbera, Priscilla A. and David Mazursky. 1983. “A Longitudinal Assessment of Consumer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction: The Dynamic Aspect of the Cognitive Process.” Journal of Marketing Research20 (November): 393-404.
37.
Levitt, Theodore. 1983. The Marketing Imagination. New York: Free Press.
38.
Lusch, Robert F. and James R. Brown. 1996. “Interdependency, Contracting, and Relational Behavior in Marketing Channels.” Journal of Marketing60 (4): 19-38.
39.
Malhotra, Naresh K. 1993. Marketing Research: An Applied Orientation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
40.
Mittal, Vikas, William T. Ross Jr., and Patrick M. Baldasare. 1998. “The Asymmetric Impact of Negative and Positive Attribute-Level Performance on Overall Satisfaction and Repurchase Intentions.” Journal of Marketing62 (January): 33-47.
41.
Narayandas, Das. 1998. “Measuring and Managing the Benefits of Customer Retention: An Empirical Investigation.” Journal of Service Research1 (November): 108-128.
42.
Oliver, Richard L. 1980. “A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions.” Journal of Marketing Research17 (November): 460-469.
—. 1997. Satisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer. New York: McGraw-Hill.
45.
— and Wayne S. DeSarbo. 1988. “Response Determinants in Satisfaction Judgments.” Journal of Consumer Research14 (March): 495-507.
46.
— and John E. Swan. 1989. “Consumer Perceptions of Interpersonal Equity and Satisfaction in Transactions: A Field Survey Approach.” Journal of Marketing53 (April): 21-35.
47.
Pedhazur, Elazar. J. 1982. Multiple Regression in Behavioral Research. 2d ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
48.
Perdue, Barbara C. and John O. Summers. 1986. “Checking the Success of Manipulations in Marketing Experiments.” Journal of Marketing Research23 (November): 317-326.
49.
Price, Linda L. and Eric J. Arnould. 1999. “Commercial Friendships: Service Provider-Client Relationships in Context.” Journal of Marketing63 (October): 38-56.
50.
Rousseau, Denise M. and Judi McLean Parks. 1992. “The Contracts of Individuals and Organizations.” In Research in Organizational Behavior. Vol. 15. Eds. L.L. Cummings and Barry M. Staw. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1-43.
51.
Russell, Daniel. 1982. “The Causal Dimension Scale: A Measure of How Individuals Perceive Causes.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology42 (June): 1137-1145.
52.
Smith, Amy K., Ruth Bolton, and Janet Wagner. 1999. “A Model of Customer Satisfaction With Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery.” Journal of Marketing Research36 (August): 356-372.
53.
Solomon, Michael R., Carol F. Surprenant, John A. Czepiel, and Evelyn G. Gutman. 1985. “A Role Theory Perspective on Dyadic Interactions: The Service Encounter.” Journal of Marketing49 (winter): 99-111.
54.
Tax, Stephen S., Stephen W. Brown, and Murali Chandrashekaran. 1998. “Customer Evaluations of Service Complaint Experiences: Implications for Relationship Marketing.” Journal of Marketing62 (April): 60-76.
55.
Tse, David K. and Peter C. Wilton. 1988. “Models of Consumer Satisfaction Formation: An Extension.” Journal of Marketing Research25 (May): 204-212.
56.
Weiner, Bernard. 1979. “A Theory of Motivation for Some Classroom Experiences.” Journal of Educational Psychology71 (1): 3-25.
57.
—. 1985. Human Motivation. New York: Springer-Verlag.
58.
—. 2000. “Attributional Thoughts About Consumer Behavior.” Journal of Consumer Research27 (December): 382-387.
59.
— and Andy Kukla. 1970. “An Attributional Analysis of Achievement Motivation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology15 (1): 1-19.
60.
Yi, Youjae. 1990. “A Critical Review of Consumer Satisfaction.” In Review of Marketing 1990. Ed. Valarie Zeithaml. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 68-123.
61.
Zeithaml, Valarie A, Leonard L. Berry, and A. Parasuraman. 1993. “The Nature and Determinants of Customer Expectations of Service.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science21 (1): 1-12.
