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The purpose of this paper is to examine causal attribution in interactional service experiences. The paper investigates how triggers in the environment of a customer-employee interaction influence customer behavioral response to employees’ negative and positive affect. Additionally, it studies the role of sympathy and authenticity as underlying mechanisms of this relationship.

Two scenario-based experimental designs (N1=162; N2=138) were used. Videotaped scenarios served as stimulus material for the manipulation of two focal variables: the employee’s emotional display as either negative or positive and the availability of an emotion trigger in the interaction environment to convey the attribution dimension of cause uncontrollability. The emotion trigger’s visibility was varied in the two studies. Customer response was captured by buying intentions.

Customer responses are more favorable for both positive and negative interactional experiences when customers have access to information on cause uncontrollability (i.e. notice triggers in the interaction environment). Analyses reveal that these effects stem from feelings of sympathy for negative experiences and authenticity for positive experiences.

This research supports the relevance of causal attribution research on interactional service experiences, which have high-profit impact. Moreover, the findings underline the importance of the experience of fact in service interactions and thereby provide a more nuanced view on the discussion of whether service providers should use impression management strategies to engender customer satisfaction even when this behavior is “faked.”

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of complete versus partial observations of service failure and recovery. This study also aims at investigating the effect of observing customers’ need for cognitive closure and types of compensation that a service provider offers.

Two experiments are conducted to test the research hypotheses. The authors use scenarios describing failure and recovery encounters that occur to a target customer at restaurant settings, and through manipulation of complete versus partial observations, they investigate observers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions.

The results suggest that customers with a partial observation are less forgiving than those with a complete observation. In particular, the former sympathized more with a target customer, blamed a service provider more and a target customer less and had lower repurchase intentions than the latter. The authors find that the need for cognitive closure heightens this tendency following a partial observation of service failure. They also find that following a complete (versus partial) observation, observers reacted more favorably to service recovery when it included (versus did not include) monetary compensation.

This research studies the effect of locus of causality following a partial versus complete observation. Future research could further examine the effect of stability and controllability. Also, the authors examined the effect of the need for cognitive closure on evaluations of service failure following a partial versus complete observation. Future research could examine the effect of some other individual difference variables.

The results offer some measures to be taken by practitioners. In particular, practitioners are advised to not offer monetary compensation when majority of observers have had a partial observation. Moreover, they are advised to offer some explanation in a timely and effective manner to ensure observers who are under the negative impact of a partial observation have some information so that they revisit their service evaluations.

The literature assumes that in failure and recovery incidents, all observing customers would know the entire story. This research challenges this assumption and highlights the key role of observation type (partial versus complete observation). Further, this research examines the effect of the need for cognitive closure on service evaluations following a partial versus complete observation. The current research finds that supposedly favorable measures by a firm (i.e. monetary compensation) may in fact backfire when a partial observation is at play.

This paper aims to formally conceptualize service mega-disruptions as any far-reaching and unforeseen general environmental stressor or threat that impacts a service organization’s ability to provide a desired level of service. The authors differentiate sudden large-scale general environmental threats from traditional service failures in scope and scale of impact via number of customers and sectors affected and duration and speed of the disruption.

This paper draws from service recovery theory to build a conceptual model of service mega-disruptions. The resulting conceptual model maps service failure recovery strategies against a service mega-disruption recovery approach to examine consumer response to changes in service value. This work further articulates additional research needs including conceptualization, measurement and methods as traditional drivers of service recovery and the value of the service experience change in response to service mega-disruptions.

This work proposes a research agenda to investigate whether service mega-disruptions can bypass the need for service recovery due to a consumer self-moderating process. As past research shows, the less control a service provider has over a failure, the more customers attribute fault to the situation and transfer blame away from an organization. This paper suggests that this self-moderating process disrupts the need for service providers to court forgiveness for a failure with perceptions of similarity and controllability providing an alternate pathway to customer forgiveness. Similarly, it is suggested that service mega-disruptions play a role in transforming service ecosystems into tighter, more contractual systems with less agency for service providers and poorer ability to adjust to market conditions. The duration and longevity of effects on service providers’ control, agency and ability to adjust following a service mega-disruption must be researched further.

This paper builds theory to develop a conceptual model of service mega-disruptions and their role in customer engagement and reshaping the service ecosystem. This paper culminates in the proposition of a research agenda that aims to build research capacity among services marketing scholars as service providers’ coordination and market conditions are challenged by service mega-disruptions.

Drawing on financial slack resources theory, stakeholder theory and signaling theory, the purpose of this study is to explore the two-way causality between liquidity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by using the cash conversion cycle (CCC) as liquidity proxy and composite and individual CSR metrics.

The data were retrieved from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database covering the period between 2013 and 2019 and 20,016 firm-year observations affiliated with ten business sectors and 60 countries. The fixed-effects panel regression analysis is executed in the empirical part.

The results indicate that firms with greater liquidity proxied by shorter CCC engage with greater CSR initiatives. They also reveal that firms with greater liquidity proxied by CCC do not regard all the dimensions of environmental and social performance equivalently; they do discriminate them. In the environmental pillar, firms funnel their cash derived from shorter CCC toward eco-innovation and resource use, respectively, but not to emissions reduction. In the social pillar, higher liquidity fosters community and human rights dimensions, respectively, but not workforce and product quality. These outcomes are largely robust to alternative CSR measurement, alternative sampling and endogeneity concerns. The reverse causality confirmed that CSR promotes higher liquidity (shorter CCC). Thus, the bidirectional relationship between CSR and liquidity is confirmed.

Although the authors wanted to consider a longer study period, they were obliged to choose 2013 as the starting period because particularly CCC data together with environmental, social and governance (ESG) data were not available in the earlier years.

Among environmental indicators, fueling eco-innovation most with greater liquidity shows that firms make a strategic choice for their long-term growth and legitimacy. Besides, greater liquidity induces greater community development and more respect for human rights rather than investing in workforce and product quality. Although this might be an outcome of the realization of a deliberate strategy and good for the society, not investing in the workforce and product quality may impair the long-term survival and competitive position of the firm in the long-run in the marketplace. The implication of reverse causality is that customers purchase products and services of firms that do good for the ecology and the community and they pay faster to those companies.

This study highlights that liquidity management and CSR are closely interrelated confirming a chicken and egg story. Firms with better liquidity management are more likely to care environment and community. Besides, doing good for society pays back in the form of enhanced firm liquidity triggering customer sympathy.

This research provides new insight by examining the two-way causality of the relationship between CSR performance and liquidity, which helps highlight the impact of CSR performance on the company’s ability to manage its cash and the benefits of having high liquidity on enhancing the company’s concern about the society and environment.

The purpose of this study was to, first, determine the demographic predictors of the extent a visitor would feel sympathetic after a visitor harassment (VH) episode and, second, to ascertain whether there were any significant connections between a visitor feeling sympathetic after such an episode and his or her loyalty intentions toward the destination.

A survey research was conducted. Snowballing was used for the online survey and accidental sampling for the paper survey. The data were analyzed using ordinal logistic regression analyses. A total of 634 surveys were analyzed.

The following were found. First, sympathy was not a common emotion visitors experienced after being harassed by a trader at a tourist destination. Second, the demographic factors age, gender, income and educational levels were not significant predictors of the extent to which visitors would be sympathetic after a VH episode. Sympathy was a significant predictor of visitors’ intention to recommend the destination and support the traders in the future but not of visitors’ intention to return to the destination.

The study was exploratory, and hence, the findings were preliminary.

The findings could lead to “new” local responses to the problem of VH at tourist destinations.

The study was the first known to look at visitor sympathy after a VH episode.

Current theoretical frameworks within economics have so far been unable to adequately explain why people tip. This chapter synthesizes anthropological method and theory into a symbolic interactionist approach, attempting to access, through ethnography, the negotiated meanings underlying and actuating tip payment in Vancouver restaurants. Customers tip for a variety of reasons, including (1) for good service, (2) to follow a social norm, (3) out of sympathetic feelings, (4) to demonstrate or enhance social standing, and (5) to secure a specific preference. The disconnect between common rationalizations for tipping, which are often reflections of formalist economic canon, and how customers actually tip, that is, according to social, cultural, and moral factors, suggests that the popular distinction between “economic” and “non-economic” exchanges is ideologically maintained. Tipping illustrates the existence and contours of what Hart (2005) refers to as the two circuits of social life – but also that these two circuits are ideological constructs.

Service employees are frequently exposed to moral dilemmas as a result of their boundary role, attending to the interests of both the organization and customers. The purpose of this paper is to explore organizational and personal values that generate moral dilemmas in the service context, as well as emotions related to employees’ moral decisions.

Using the critical incidents technique, data were collected from service providers about moral dilemmas in the workplace. The data were analyzed independently by each author, with an agreement rate of 84-88 percent.

The results show that service employees confront dilemmas as a result of conflicts between the following organizational and personal values: standardization vs personalization; profit vs integrity; and emotional display rules vs dignity. Moral decision making involves emotions generated by customer distress, negative emotions toward customers, and emotions of guilt, shame, or fear.

Little research has studied moral conflicts in service encounters from employees’ perspective. Using a qualitative approach, this study explores the role of personal values and moral emotions in such processes.

A well‐prepared and presented proposal or tender can give a company a strong competitive edge. It is, however, an aspect of marketing that is often neglected.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the role of customers and employees in the buffer effect of CSR around the 2008 financial crisis in the European context.

Using a sample of 323 European firms listed in STOXX Europe 600 Index, different models are estimated to test whether the effect of CSR ratings on firms' relationships with their customers and employees could be different during the 2008 financial crisis relative to the pre-crisis and post-crisis periods.

The paper shows that CSR rating has a significantly negative impact on firms' accounts receivable and a significantly positive effect on employee productivity during the crisis period (from 2007 to 2009). However, there is no significant effect of CSR rating during the non-crisis periods. These results suggest that during negative events, customers are willing to continue supporting high-CSR firms by paying their invoices faster. Furthermore, these firms benefit from higher productivity of their employees who are willing to work harder in periods of uncertainty.

Firms should invest in CSR practices to maintain strong and cooperative relationships with their customers and employees. Also, investors should choose firms engaging in more social capital. Moreover, policymakers should encourage implementing CSR practices which act as an insurance-like protection in times of negative events.

This paper adds to the previous studies by investigating whether the cooperative role of customers and employees can explain the buffer role of CSR around the crisis. Furthermore, it considers companies located in several European countries for a long period (from 2004 to 2012) to compare periods of crisis and non-crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of emotions that consumers experience following service failures and to assess the effects of each of these emotions on important behavioral outcomes.

This paper extends the work of Wetzer et al. (2007) and draws upon the existing literature to test a series of research hypotheses tying emotions to four important behavioral outcomes primarily using stepwise regression.

When a service failure occurs, customers experience any of a variety of negative emotions. The effect on behavioral outcomes depends on the specific emotion experienced by the consumer. The current research, which benefits by using retrospective experience sampling, finds that frustration is the predominant emotion experienced by customers following service failure, but that anger, regret and frustration affect behavioral outcomes. Uncertainty also plays a role.

Future research should investigate the antecedents of propensity for emotions and predisposition toward industries, as well as the consequences of word-of-mouth (WOM) praise and WOM activity. Additionally, emotions could be examined by service stage. Several other moderators could be investigated, including severity, complaining behavior, repeat occurrence, service importance, remedies and forgiveness, product vs process failures, tenure, gender and age.

The current research emphasizes the importance of understanding which emotion is being experienced by a customer following service failure to identify the behavioral outcomes that will be most impacted. The specific managerial implications depend upon the specific emotional response experienced by the customer and are discussed separately for anger, regret and frustration. Service personnel must be trained to recognize and address specific customer emotions rather than to provide a canned or generalized response.

To date, there has been little, if any, systematic research into the effects of multiple discrete negative emotions on multiple desirable behavioral outcomes. The current study examines six discrete emotions. Predominant emotions are differentiated from emotional intensity. The behavioral outcomes of reconciliation and reduced share-of-wallet are added to the traditional outcomes of repatronage intentions and negative WOM. While existing research tends to rely on a scenario approach, this study uses the retrospective experience sampling method. The authors distinguish between mixed emotions and multiple emotions. The relative effects of disappointment and regret are examined for each of the four outcomes. Finally, importance-performance map analysis was applied to the findings to prioritize managerial attention. Numerous managerial and research implications are identified.