Consumer-to-Consumer Conversations in Service Settings

Abstract

This article contributes, in two ways, to our understanding of the nature, scope, and significance of conversations between strangers in service environments. First, a framework is introduced that provides both academics and practitioners with a summary of the key issues associated with the stimuli, manifestations, and consequences of such conversations. Second, the article reports a market-oriented ethnography of a specific service—rail travel—that locates stranger conversations within a broader categorization of consumer travel behaviors. This has resulted in the identification of a stabilizing effect of conversations between strangers through consumer anxiety reduction, the enactment of the partial employee role, and the supply of social interaction. The stabilizing effect can act as a “defuser” of dissatisfaction in services where consumers are in close proximity for prolonged periods in the service setting and regularly express dissatisfaction with service provision.