Other Customer Service Failures: Emotions, Impacts, and Attributions

Abstract

While customer-to-customer interactions are frequent in hospitality and tourism settings, very little research investigates the effects of other customers and other customer-generated service failures. Using the critical incident technique, this research builds on theory and provides important managerial implications in the areas of other customers, attributions, and service failure. Results find that customers experience emotions, including anger, frustration, and sympathy. In addition, even though customers attribute that the other customers are responsible for the failure, they still formed negative perceptions and behaviors toward the firm. Third, results find that management often did nothing to recover from the failure, which further exacerbated negative perceptions and behaviors.