Campus Units

Marketing

Document Type

Article

Publication Version

Published Version

Publication Date

2-2021

Journal or Book Title

Journal of Service Science and Management

Volume

14

Issue

1

DOI

10.4236/jssm.2021.141002

Abstract

When service providers make an effort to recover from service failures, customers may respond more favorably at certain times as compared to other times. This article attempts to explain psychological mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. The results of a scenario experiment show that customer perception of successful recovery strategy can boost customer satisfaction to a higher level when customers believe the service failure outcome is due to self-behavior (i.e., have an internal locus of control) as compared to when they believe that is due to providers’ behavior. In this situation, satisfaction is developed via 1) customers’ feelings of gratitude toward the provider’s recovery efforts and 2) their guilt derived from an internal locus of control. Findings provide evidence that both gratitude and guilt can motivate customers to adopt behaviors that encourage cultivation of good relationships with businesses.

Comments

This article is published as Su, L. , Raju, S. and Laczniak, R. (2021) The Roles of Gratitude and Guilt on Customer Satisfaction in Perceptions of Service Failure and Recovery. Journal of Service Science and Management, 14, 12-33. doi: 10.4236/jssm.2021.141002.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Copyright Owner

The Author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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