Intentionality attributions and humiliation: The impact on customer behavior

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to determine whether intentionality attributions have an effect on the customer’s complaint and switching behavior after a service failure, after accounting for the effects of the traditional dimensions of attribution (stability and controllability), and to examine whether intentionality attributions give rise to humiliation and to what degree this negative emotion enables us to understand the customer’s complaint and switching behavior after a service failure.

Design/methodology/approach

A contribution of this investigation is that it studies real complaint and switching behaviors, as the few studies that focus on understanding customers’ complaint and defection behaviors mostly analyze customers’ intentions.

Findings

The results of the study indicate that intentionality attributions have an effect on the customer’s switching behavior after a service failure, in addition to the impact of the traditional dimensions of attribution. The findings also show that humiliation is the emotion that mediates the relationship between intentionality attributions and switching behavior, opposite to other emotions that may also be related to attributions. Finally, the results also support that the effect of attribution of intentionality on complaint behavior is indirect; it only exists because attribution of intentionality influences negative emotions like humiliation, which in turn influences complaint behavior.

Practical implications

To understand what makes customers complain after a service failure or switch service providers without giving them first the possibility of recovering the failure may help managers reduce the damage caused by the failure and increase the company’s profits.

Originality/value

This study will try to contribute to the service failure research by analyzing the role of two variables that have not been analyzed before in this context: intentionality attribution and humiliation.

Citation

Varela-Neira, C., Vázquez-Casielles, R. and Iglesias, V. (2014), "Intentionality attributions and humiliation: The impact on customer behavior", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 48 No. 5/6, pp. 901-923. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-01-2012-0035