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Customer retaliation at the employee–customer interface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Dominique A Keeffe ,
Rebekah Russell-Bennett  and
Alastair Tombs
Dominique A Keeffe
Affiliation:
School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane QLD, Australia
Rebekah Russell-Bennett
Affiliation:
School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane QLD, Australia
Alastair Tombs
Affiliation:
UQ Business School, University of Queensland, St Lucia QLD, Australia
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Abstract

The service encounter is the point where employees and customers interact both positively and negatively. When things go wrong (service failure), initially it is the employee who is required to remedy the situation (recover the service). While positive service recovery outcomes are well investigated, there is little research that investigates whether specific service recovery strategies can be used to reduce customer anger and retaliation. Further, there is little research regarding whether an organisation's acceptance of blame has an effect on customer anger and retaliation. These gaps are addressed using a quasi-experimental study of 120 respondents that examines customers' emotional and behavioural responses to specific service recovery strategies following a service failure. The results show that high-level service recovery strategies directly reduce the occurrence of retaliation, as well as indirectly reduce retaliation through the mediating effects of customer anger. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Keywords

customer retaliationservice failureservice recoveryattribution of blameapologycompensation
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , September 2008 , pp. 438 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2008

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