Managing customers’ undesirable responses towards hospitality service brands during service failure: The moderating role of other customer perception

Abstract

• Examines sequential mediation of dissatisfaction and brand hate between service failure severity and brand retaliation. • Outlines the differential roles of OCP dimensions in mitigating the effect of service failure severity on dissatisfaction. • OCP behavior dominates in mitigating the effect of service failure severity on dissatisfaction. • OCP-B (over OCP-A and OCP-S) dominates in mitigating dissatisfaction for relational (but not for transactional) customers. This research examines how perceived service failure severity (SFS) in an interactive multi-actor service context may lead to customer retaliation and revisit intention via sequential mediation of dissatisfaction and brand hate. The research also examines how other customer perception, reflected in appearance (OCP-A), similarity (OCP-S) and behaviour (OCP-B), conditions these relationships. In this attempt, the research employs two-experimental studies (Studies 1 & 2) and two self-reported surveys (Studies 3 & 4). Findings from Study 1 establish that service failure leads to retaliation via sequential mediation of dissatisfaction and brand hate. This study also supports that other customer perception can shape the adverse effect of service failure severity on dissatisfaction. Further, in Study 2 it is established that OCP-B is more influential (over OCP-S and OCP-A) in mitigating the adverse effect of SFS on dissatisfaction. Followed by this, Study 3 extends the findings into a different setting, and also confirms the external validity of Studies 1 and 2. Finally, Study 4 incorporates the transactional vs. relational orientation of customers, and the findings elucidate that OCP-B (over OCP-A and OCP-S) dominates in mitigating dissatisfaction for relational customers. However, no such dominance is observed for transactional customers. The findings from the research provide novel insights for managing service failure in hospitality sector.