The variable nature of services: An empirical examination of trust and its effects on customers' satisfaction responses to poor and good service

Abstract

A repeat-purchase customer who patronizes the same service provider over time is likely to experience both good and poor service performance since services are inherently variable. One way for the provider to deal with variability is to target variables that act as "forgivers', i.e. variables that may reduce the negative impact of service variability. In this paper, we examine the role of trust as a potential "forgiver'. Since trust is commonly defined in terms of the customer's willingness to accept vulnerability due to a belief in the exchange partner's reliability, it might be assumed that a high level of pre-encounter trust produces a forgiving attitude among customers who are subject to poor performance encounters with the provider. However, the empirical study reported in this paper indicates that the service provider should not hope for trust-generated customer forgiveness when performance is below expectations.