Developing a deeper understanding of post-purchase perceived risk and behavioral intentions in a service setting

Researchers and service providers have realized that a disproportionate share of a firm’s sales and profits come from a relatively small number of loyal customers that repeatedly purchase the firm’s services. In many service settings, such as health care, repeated interactions between the service provider and the client are necessary for service delivery. While service quality is certainly important, it is also important that customers’ perceptions of perceived risk are taken into account and that customers perceive a degree of control over the services provided. We develop a conceptual model of linkages between the physical environment of the service, perceived control over the service and service quality and, demonstrate through two empirical studies, how these factors affect perceived risk and post-purchase behavioral intentions. Both studies were conducted in health care settings. In the first study, we collected data using a mail survey of 192 patients after their treatment from a regional hospital. In the second study, survey data were collected from 101 patients of a specialized clinic providing alternative therapies within a major hospital. Our results provide confirmation that the favorable physical environment of the service setting enhances perceived control and perceptions of service quality. Moreover, perceived control and perceived quality of the service provider reduces post-purchase perceived risk. Finally, post-purchase perceived risk reduces behavioral intentions, while perceived quality of the service provider enhances behavioral intentions. Authors contributed equally to the research.     

Anger,frustration, and helplessness after service failure: coping strategies and effective informational support

We examine the crucial role of helplessness in explaining idiosyncratic coping responses to anger and frustration after service failure (a). Moreover, we examine the mitigating effect of informational support (i.e., explanations) on these emotions (b). With respect to (a), it is argued that the coincidence of anger (frustration) and high levels of helplessness enhances vindictive nWOM (support-seeking nWOM), whereas the coincidence of anger (frustration) and low levels of helplessness enhances vindictive complaining (problem-solving complaining). With respect to (b), it is argued that a retrospective explanation mitigates anger, whereas a prospective explanation mitigates helplessness. Using partial least squares modeling, these assumptions are tested and supported in an experiment and in a field survey with hotel guests. Finally, we delineate implications for theory and practice.     

Angry customers don't come back,they get back: The experience and behavioral implications of anger and dissatisfaction in services

This article investigates the specific experience of anger and dissatisfaction and their effects on customers' behavioral responses to failed service encounters across industries. Study 1 demonstrates that anger and dissatisfaction are qualitatively different emotions with respect to their idiosyncratic experiential content. Study 2 builds on these findings and shows how anger and service encounter dissatisfaction differentially affect customer behavior. It provides empirical support for the contention that anger mediates the relationship between service encounter dissatisfaction and customers' behavioral responses. The findings of Study 2 diverge from previous findings in marketing on the interrelationships between customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction, related consumption emotions, and customers' behavioral responses to service failure. The implications of these findings for services marketing theory and practice are delineated. Roger Bougie (J.R.G.Bougie@uvt.nl) is an assistant professor of marketing at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His research interests are emotions and their impact on consumer behavior, and consumer decision making. Rik Pieters is a professor of marketing at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His research interests are emotions in consumer behavior, visual attention and memory, and social networks. His work has appeared in, among others, theJournal of Consumer Research, theJournal of Economic Literature, theJournal of Marketing Research, andMarketing Science. Marcel Zeelenberg is a professor of social psychology at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His research interest is in anticipated emotions and acutal emotional experiences and their impact on behavioral decision making. His work has appeared in, among others, theJournal of Consumer Research, theJournal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.     

Unveiling the recovery time zone of tolerance: when time matters in service recovery

This article examines the link between recovery time and customer compensation expectations for service failures that cannot be immediately redressed. First, we show that the relationship between recovery time and compensation expectations is nonlinear. Initially, in a recovery time zone of tolerance, compensation expectations do not increase. Beyond this zone, the relationship follows an inverted U-shape, such that compensation expectations first increase but decrease in the long run. Second, our results show that long recovery times are accompanied by additional negative effects, including lower satisfaction with the recovery and negative word of mouth, so postponing service recovery represents a poor option. Third, relationship strength functions as a moderator. First-time customers expect higher compensation earlier; relational customers display a recovery time zone of tolerance but claim considerably higher compensations afterwards. Fourth, communication initiatives like the separate provision of status updates or an explanation may limit increases in compensation expectations over time. Still, their joint usage creates a “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect, suggesting that if the usage of communication initiatives is taken too far it may lead to negative outcomes such as increasing compensation expectations.     

网购服务补救质量对顾客行为意向的影响研究

文献表明服务补救质量与顾客的后续行为之间存在着显著的相关关系,但在网购情境下这种关系是否存在还未得到充分检验。论文从交互质量、程序质量、信息质量和结果质量四个维度衡量网购服务补救质量,构建了网络购物服务补救质量对顾客行为意向的影响模型,并对模型进行了检验。结果发现,网购情境下服务补救质量对顾客满意度和行为意向均有显著的影响,且顾客满意度在服务补救质量影响顾客行为意向的过程中起到了中介作用。     

Understanding the co-creation effect: when does collaborating with customers provide a lift to service recovery?

Because co-creation allows customers to help shape or personalize the content of their experience, it can affect customer satisfaction with recovery efforts, as well as offer a more cost-effective alternative to compensation. This article identifies specific situations in which co-creation is and is not useful. Study 1 tests the impact of co-creation in comparison with compensation for enhancing satisfaction with the recovery process and demonstrates that co-creation offers a cost-efficient strategy for companies when customers must deal with severe delays. Study 2 extends these results by showing that the impact extends to repurchase intentions. Study 3 details conditions in which co-creation harms evaluations. Finally, Study 4 explores whether it is necessary for the company to meet the customer??s requests when co-creating a recovery, as well as what happens when the company exceeds a customer??s requests. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications, limitations, and research directions that emerge from the studies.     

Exploring consumer conflict management in service encounters

Consumer researchers have yet to examine how consumers frame and deal with conflict. Understanding how consumers manage conflict is essential for service providers seeking to effectively recover instances of service failure, and avoid the costs associated with increasing instances of consumer anger. Using a modified grounded theory approach, we develop a model of consumer conflict management drawing on 39 informant accounts of service failures. The emergent model proposes that consumers’ conflict style is related to whether conflict is framed in task or personal terms. Task-framed conflicts resulted in more productive conflict styles than those framed in personal terms. Self vs. other orientation moderated the relationship between conflict frame and conflict style. These findings help us better understand the nature of consumer conflict and identify the importance of carefully targeting service recovery efforts to reduce instances of anger.     

社交媒体特征、感知形象与旅游者行为意向的关系

社交媒体不仅深刻地影响着人们的日常生活,而且也影响着人们对旅游目的地形象的感知及旅游者的行为意向。社交媒体的主要特征包括感知有用性、生动性和互动性三个方面。为探索社交媒体特征对感知形象及旅游者行为意向的影响机理,本文以重庆为例,采用结构方程模型实证检验社交媒体特征与感知形象及旅游者行为意向之间的关系。结果发现:社交媒体的三个特征对旅游者行为意向具有直接正向影响;社交媒体的三个特征通过感知形象间接作用于旅游者行为意向;感知形象显著影响旅游者行为意向。     

Service crisis recovery and firm performance: insights from information breach announcements

The extant literature has studied the effects of a firm’s service recovery efforts on the reactions of customers and employees following an individual service failure. However, the impact of recovery efforts on a firm’s performance after a public and large service failure—such as a large-scale information breach—has received scant attention. To address this gap, this current research develops a framework and finds support for the impact of service crisis recoveries on a firm’s performance, as measured by firm-idiosyncratic risk. Using a unique dataset of service crisis recoveries, the authors find that firms offering compensation (i.e., tangible redresses) or process improvement (i.e., improvements in organizational processes) show more stable performance (less idiosyncratic risk), from two quarters to two calendar years after the announcement of their recovery plan. In line with the documented dual effect of apologies, firms that offer apology-based recoveries display more volatile performance (higher idiosyncratic risk). Of note, this volatility increases with the number of affected individuals, and it remains unaffected even when the apology is expressed with high intensity.     

A study of the relationships between cognitive appraisals and consumption emotions

While emotions have been shown to be significant determinants of various consumer behaviors, the antecedents of these emotions have not received much attention in the marketing literature. The current research examines a cognitive model of emotion and uses an experiment to show that the appraisals of goal relevance, goal congruence, and coping potential are determinants of consumption emotions such as anger, sadness, and joy/satisfaction. These emotions are also shown to be determinants of postconsumption behaviors such as word-of-mouth intentions. His research interests include consumption emotions, complaining behavior, cognitive models of emotion, and covariance structure modeling.     

旅游企业服务补救措施与游客满意度关系研究

获得境内外游客是旅游企业关注的问题,但如何保留游客这一问题却常被忽视。旅游服务失败时常发生,对其及时正确的补救关系到游客满意度。基于此,试图研究不同的旅游企业服务补救措施与游客满意度的关系,为旅游企业提供借鉴和参考。研究表明,道歉和解释并不能在实质上减少游客的不满;而补偿、承认错误和对员工授权则能够减少游客的不满;旅游企业采取补救措施的主动性也影响到游客对服务补救的满意度。     

Selling financial services: the effect of consumer product knowledge and salesperson commission on consumer suspicion and intentions

This research examines how consumers’ subjective product knowledge affects the way they interpret salesperson compensation within the financial services industry. Data from a nationwide panel of consumers show that higher product knowledge consumers become highly suspicious and lower purchase intentions when salesperson commission rates fall outside of the latitude of acceptance (Study 1). Study 2 results, however, demonstrate a reversal of these effects by showing that compensation–recommendation consistency is an important moderator in financial salesperson interactions. In addition, the study describes boundaries of the suspicious mindset that underlies consumer responses to sales information. Theoretical and practical implications of the finding are discussed, as are future research directions.     

The role of climate: implications for service employee engagement and customer service performance

This research attempts to challenge the resource–engagement and engagement–performance linkage of the job demands–resources model by testing these links under the moderating role of two climates: performance-focused and service failure recovery. Two studies test a model on the boundary conditions of the linkages across four service industries. The results suggest that whether a resource (i.e., self-efficacy and job autonomy) positively or negatively affects engagement depends on whether (1) a climate is appraised as a challenge or hindrance demand and (2) a climate is deemed a complementary or compensatory resource. Using multi-respondent data from customer service employees and their supervisors in the health care industry, Study 1 conceptualizes climate as organizational climate and finds that performance-focused climate strengthens (weakens) the positive effect of self-efficacy (job autonomy) on engagement while service failure recovery climate weakens the positive impact of self-efficacy on engagement. Study 2 generalizes the findings from Study 1 and provides broad support by testing the model using psychological climate in the financial services, tourism and hospitality, and retailing industries. This study closes with a configuration approach to climate research by discussing when multiple climates can co-exist under different types of resources.     

金融稳定视角下金融支持实体经济能力的实证研究——以新疆为例

在当前国际金融危机深层次影响不断显现、国内宏观经济下行压力加大、区域经济加快发展的背景下,如何进一步优化配置金融资源,提升金融对实体经济的支持力度和支持效率就显得尤为迫切。本文从金融稳定的角度出发,首先从总量、结构、效率、可持续性等几个维度对当前新疆金融服务实体经济能力进行现状判断,并从宏观角度对金融发展与实体经济发展不相适应方面进行分析。其次,基于金融效率,运用统计方法对新疆金融支持实体经济发展能力进行实证检验,得出新疆金融业自身发展对支持实体经济发展的影响作用明显的结论。最后,就如何进一步提高金融支持实体经济的能力提出相关建议。     

Service failure and recovery: The impact of relationship factors on customer satisfaction

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. Ronald L. Hess Jr. (ron. hess@business.wm.edu) (Ph.D., Virginia Tech) is currently an assistant professor of marketing at the College of William & Mary. His research interests include customer responses to service and product failures; organizational complaint handling; and customer assessments of satisfaction, loyalty, and service quality. He has published his research inMarketing Letters and several conference proceedings. Shankar Ganesan (sganesan @bpa.arizona.edu) (Ph.D., University of Florida) is an associate professor of marketing and Lisle and Rosslyn Payne Fellow in Marketing at the Eller College of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona. His research interests focus on the areas of interorganizational relationships, buyer-seller negotiations, service failure and recovery, new product innovation, and E-marketing. He is the author of several articles that have appeared in leading academic journals, including theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theJournal of Applied Psychology. He currently serves on the editorial review board of theJournal of Marketing Research and theJournal of Marketing. Noreen M. Klein (nklein@vt.edu) (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is currently an associate professor of marketing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her research interests include consumer decision making and the behavioral aspects of pricing, and her research has been published in the theJournal of Consumer Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Making, and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science.     

银行个人理财客户识别矩阵构建及实证研究——基于感知利益与感知风险权衡的视角

银行个人理财客户的购买决策建立在对理财产品整体评估的基础上。本文对感知价值的内涵进行理论拓展与创新,提出银行个人理财客户对理财产品的感知价值是感知利益与感知风险的权衡,并归纳了感知利益与感知风险的构成维度。根据感知利益与感知风险水平差异对个人理财客户类型进行识别,通过实证研究检验了整体及各客户类型感知利益与感知风险对感知价值及购买意愿的综合影响效应。     

Multiple emotional contagions in service encounters

This paper investigates the dynamic impact of multiple sequential emotional displays by employees on customers’ negative emotions. Using video-based stimuli to manipulate emotional displays by employees, this study shows the sequential occurrences of negative and positive emotional contagions in service failure and recovery encounters. The results suggest that higher levels of employees’ negative emotional displays lead to a greater increase in customers’ negative emotions through the process of negative emotional contagion during service failure. More importantly, we find that positive emotional displays by employees can decrease customers’ negative emotions through the process of positive emotional contagion during service recovery, i.e., higher levels of employee positive emotional displays lead to a greater decrease in customers’ negative emotions. In addition, no matter whether customers experience higher or lower levels of employee positive emotional displays during service recovery, their final negative emotions cannot fully return to their emotional levels prior to service failure. However, for customers experiencing higher levels of employee positive emotional displays, their final negative emotions can be greatly mitigated and are closer to their initial emotional levels, as compared to customers experiencing lower levels of employee positive emotional displays. The results further indicate that susceptibility to emotional contagion increases the effect of employees’ negative (positive) emotional displays on customers’ negative emotions during service failure (recovery). The findings of this study suggest that service firms should provide effective training to their frontline service employees so that they can display proper positive emotions during service encounters.     

A voice from the silent masses: An exploratory and comparative analysis of noncomplainers

This study used a critical incident survey with both qualitative and quantitative sections to investigate noncomplainers. Noncomplainers are customers who experience service failures but do not voice complaints. The qualitative study (n=149) explored reasons why customers do not complain after experiencing service failures. In the quantitative study (n=530), two kinds of noncomplainers who either (a) received organization-initiated recoveries or(b) exited the encounters without recoveries were compared with three kinds of complaining customers who received (a) satisfactory recoveries, (b) dissatisfactory recoveries, or (c) no recoveries. The five customer groups were compared across repurchase intentions, negative affect, perceived regret, and intentions to engage in negative word of mouth. The results of the comparative analyses challenge existing views of noncomplainers’ repurchase intentions and negative outcome levels. Clay M. Voorhees (voorhees@bus.msu.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University. His research interests are in the areas of service decision making, consumer complaining behavior, customer equity, and the development and application of innovative research methods to service decision making models. Clay’s research has been published inJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, andJournal of Services Marketing. Michael (“Mike”) K. Brady (mbrady@cob.fsu.edu) is an associate professor of marketing and director of the doctoral program at Florida State University. His research interests are in the areas of managing the service decision-making process, managing service failure, and the strategic ramifications of branding for service firms. Mike’s research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Retailing, Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Services Marketing, International Journal of Service Industry Management, and other outlets. Mike has won both the M. Wayne Delozier Award for Best Conference Paper at the Academy of Marketing Science Conference and the Steven J. Shaw Award for Best Conference Paper at the Society for Marketing Advances Conference. Mike serves on the editorial review boards of theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, andJournal of Retailing and was named an Outstanding Reviewer by theJournal of Retailing in 2004. David M. Horowitz (dmh03@fsu.edu) is a marketing doctoral candidate at Florida State University whose interests include services marketing, cognitive anthropology research methods, and marketing and public policy issues. He completed his MBA at San Diego State University and holds a BS in industrial engineering from Stanford University. David’s research has been published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science and the proceedings of national and regional conferences.     

Customer betrayal and retaliation: when your best customers become your worst enemies

After a service failure and a poor recovery, what leads loyal customers to try to punish a firm even if there is no material gain for doing so? We propose and test a justice-based model that incorporates perceived betrayal as the means to understand customer retaliation and the “love becomes hate” effect. The results suggest that betrayal is a key motivational force that leads customers to restore fairness by all means possible, including retaliation. In contrast to the majority of findings in the service literature, we propose and find that relationship quality has unfavorable effects on a customer’s response to a service recovery. As a relationship gains in strength, a violation of the fairness norm was found to have a stronger effect on the sense of betrayal experienced by customers. The model was tested on a national sample of airline passengers who complained to a consumer agency after an unsuccessful recovery.     

对湖北农村金融消费者保护问题的思考

金融产品和服务具有专业化、技术化的特性,面对由金融精英组成的金融产品和服务的提供者,金融消费者相对而言不一定具备金融专业知识,信息不对称的弱势地位显而易见。农村金融消费者由于文化素质低,金融知识缺乏,加之弱势群体的心里劣势,消费者权益更容易受到侵害。侵害消费者的行为不仅损害了农民的利益,也损害了公众对金融体系的信心,影响金融行业的健康发展。针对农村消费者保护不力的状况,需要从增强农村金融供给、提高消费者文化素质和维权意识,加强金融机构的服务意识以及加强金融监管等多方面着手。