The power of explanations in mitigating the ill‐effects of service failures

Anna S. Mattila

121 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Services Marketing

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Customer Service Quality and Loyalty Service and Product Innovation AI in Service Interactions

Abstract

Purpose To examine the role of explanations in influencing customer perceptions of service failures, this study investigated the impact of two types of explanations: retrospective excuses and anticipatory excuses on customers' fairness perceptions and their tipping behaviors. Design/methodology/approach A 3 (explanation: absent, anticipatory, retrospective) × 2 (service recovery effort: no tangible compensation or 20 percent off the total bill) between‐participant design was used to test the hypotheses. Simulated dining experiences were enacted and videotaped to represent the six conditions. Findings The findings of this study imply that customer‐contact employees might be able to influence customer impressions by offering a causal explanation for a service failure. Research limitations/implications Owing to the restaurant‐oriented focus of this study, these results may not be generalizable to other service industries. Second, our stimuli involved service encounters that were clearly inadequate in terms of interactional treatment. Third, due to the research method employed in this study the dyadic nature of the service encounter is minimized. Fourth, the student sample somewhat limits the generalizability of the results. Practical implications The results indicate that retrospective excuses might enhance customers' fairness perceptions more than anticipatory excuses. Yet, it is important to keep in mind that explanations for failures, even when combined with tangible compensation, are poor substitutes for inadequate interpersonal treatment. Originality/value The findings of this study add to the evidence that offering an explanation for a service failure can positively influence customer perceptions. Moreover, the paper introduces tipping as a surrogate of satisfaction to the service recovery literature.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 121 citations exist upstream.

References

2001Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research.2001On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure.1990The Service Encounter: Diagnosing Favorable and Unfavorable Incidents 1998Customer Evaluations of Service Complaint Experiences: Implications for Relationship Marketing 1999A Model of Customer Satisfaction with Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery 1999A Model of Customer Satisfaction with Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery 1988Recent Attribution Research in Consumer Behavior: A Review and New Directions 2000Attributional Thoughts about Consumer Behavior

Cited by

2012Toward Understanding Consumer Processing of Negative Online Word-of-Mouth Communication 2011A cross‐cultural comparison of perceived informational fairness with service failure explanations 2013Does a surprise strategy need words? The effect of explanations for a surprise strategy on customer delight and expectations 2010Explaining customer satisfaction with complaint handling 2018

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.