IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joreco/v40y2018icp60-65.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Whom do customers blame for a service failure? Effects of thought speed on causal locus attribution

Author

Listed:
  • Pacheco, Natália Araújo
  • Geuens, Maggie
  • Pizzutti, Cristiane

Abstract

This research investigates the impact of customers’ thought speeds in a service failure setting. Fast-thinking induces not only heuristic processing, but also positive affect. As both factors predict a different outcome on whom customers blame for the failure, this study examines rival hypotheses. Findings from three experiments show that fast-thinking leads respondents to attribute failures to the service providers (i.e., showing a self-serving bias). In addition, fast-thinking also has more downstream consequences, as it negatively affects repurchase intentions and positively affects intentions to spread negative word of mouth. Therefore, service providers are encouraged to stimulate slow thought during service encounters.

Suggested Citation

  • Pacheco, Natália Araújo & Geuens, Maggie & Pizzutti, Cristiane, 2018. "Whom do customers blame for a service failure? Effects of thought speed on causal locus attribution," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 60-65.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:40:y:2018:i:c:p:60-65
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.09.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698917300760
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.09.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Folkes, Valerie S, 1984. "Consumer Reactions to Product Failure: An Attributional Approach," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 10(4), pages 398-409, March.
    2. Weiner, Bernard, 2000. "Attributional Thoughts about Consumer Behavior," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(3), pages 382-387, December.
    3. Choi, Sunmee & Mattila, Anna S., 2008. "Perceived controllability and service expectations: Influences on customer reactions following service failure," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 24-30, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yang, Yan & Hu, Jing, 2021. "Self-diminishing effects of awe on consumer forgiveness in service encounters," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    2. Bagherzadeh, Ramin & Rawal, Monika & Wei, Shuqin & Saavedra Torres, Jose Luis, 2020. "The journey from customer participation in service failure to co-creation in service recovery," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    3. Martinez, Luisa M. & Pacheco, Natália & Ramos, Filipe R. & Bicho, Marta, 2023. "Would you try it again? Dual effects of customer mindfulness on service recovery," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    4. Khenfer, Jamel & Cuny, Caroline, 2020. "Brand preference in the face of control loss and service failure: The role of the sound of brands," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    5. Simone T. Peinkofer & Yao Henry Jin, 2023. "The impact of order fulfillment information disclosure on consequences of deceptive counterfeits," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(1), pages 237-260, January.
    6. Boadi, Evans Asante & He, Zheng & Antwi, Collins Opoku & Md Altab, Hossin & Bosompem, Josephine & Hinson, Robert Ebo & Atuobuah Boadi, Victoria, 2022. "Value co-creation and employee service behaviours: The moderating role of trust in employee - hotel relationship," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    7. Li, Jinhua & Liu, Li & Qing, Qiankai, 2022. "Differentiated consumer forgiveness for different corporate social irresponsibility domains: The moderating role of corporate reputation and patriotism," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    8. Philp, Matthew & Pyle, Martin A., 2021. "The “easy win” preference: Negative consumption experiences, incompetence, and the influence on subsequent unrelated loyalty behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 1-10.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tom Joonhwan Kim & Youjae Yi & Jongan Choi, 2020. "The boomerang effect of brand personality congruency in a product-harm crisis," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 45(4), pages 645-661, November.
    2. Davoud Nikbin & Ishak Ismail & Malliga Marimuthu, 2013. "The relationship between informational justice, recovery satisfaction, and loyalty: the moderating role of failure attributions," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 7(3), pages 419-435, September.
    3. Pacheco, Natália Araújo & Becker, Larissa Carine Braz & Brei, Vinícius Andrade, 2017. "A light in the dark: The benefits of co-production in service failures," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 95-101.
    4. Verena Hüttl-Maack & Doreén Pick & Heribert Gierl, 2019. "Handle with care! How majority cues can reduce the negative effects of warnings of foreseeable product failures," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 689-723, August.
    5. Kalamas, Maria & Laroche, Michel & Makdessian, Lucy, 2008. "Reaching the boiling point: Consumers' negative affective reactions to firm-attributed service failures," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(8), pages 813-824, August.
    6. Scheidler, Sabrina & Edinger-Schons, Laura Marie, 2020. "Partners in crime? The impact of consumers' culpability for corporate social irresponsibility on their boycott attitude," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 607-620.
    7. Philp, Matthew & Ashworth, Laurence, 2020. "I should have known better!: When firm-caused failure leads to self-image concerns and reduces negative word-of-mouth," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 283-293.
    8. Kim, Junyong & Wansink, Brian, 2012. "How Retailers’ Recommendation and Return Policies Alter Product Evaluations," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(4), pages 528-541.
    9. Enis Yakut & Ayse Gul Bayraktaroglu, 2021. "Consumer reactions to product recalls: the effects of intentionality, reputation, and public apology on purchase intentions," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 91(4), pages 527-564, May.
    10. Shannon W. Anderson & L. Scott Baggett & Sally K. Widener, 2009. "The Impact of Service Operations Failures on Customer Satisfaction: Evidence on How Failures and Their Source Affect What Matters to Customers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(1), pages 52-69, November.
    11. Hsu, Liwu & Lawrence, Benjamin, 2016. "The role of social media and brand equity during a product recall crisis: A shareholder value perspective," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 59-77.
    12. Bambauer-Sachse, Silke & Rabeson, Landisoa, 2015. "Determining adequate tangible compensation in service recovery processes for developed and developing countries: The role of severity and responsibility," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 117-127.
    13. Pierre-Nicolas Schwab, 2015. "Online complaint handling practices: Company strategies and their effects upon post-complaint satisfaction," Working Papers CEB 15-005, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    14. Wang, Kai-Yu & Liang, Minli & Peracchio, Laura A., 2011. "Strategies to offset dissatisfactory product performance: The role of post-purchase marketing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(8), pages 809-815, August.
    15. Baliga, Ashwin J. & Chawla, Vaibhav & Sunder M, Vijaya & Ganesh, L.S. & Sivakumaran, Bharadhwaj, 2021. "Service Failure and Recovery in B2B Markets – A Morphological Analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 763-781.
    16. Kim, Junghyun & Park, Taehoon, 2020. "How corporate social responsibility (CSR) saves a company: The role of gratitude in buffering vindictive consumer behavior from product failures," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 461-472.
    17. Sakib, S M Nazmuz, 2023. "Application of Attribution Theory in Business and Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis," OSF Preprints as3bg, Center for Open Science.
    18. Baker, Thomas L. & Meyer, Tracy, 2012. "Moderating effect of discriminatory attributions on repatronage intentions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 211-217.
    19. Liao, Shuling & Cheng, Colin C.J., 2014. "Brand equity and the exacerbating factors of product innovation failure evaluations: A communication effect perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 2919-2925.
    20. Fan-Yun Pai & Tsu-Ming Yeh & Liang-Yu Lin, 2018. "Relationship Level and Customer Response to Service Recovery," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 140(3), pages 1301-1319, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:40:y:2018:i:c:p:60-65. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing-and-consumer-services .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.