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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 consumer responses to online retailer service recovery remedies following a service failure and explores whether the phenomenon of the service recovery paradox exists within the context of online retailing.

This paper reports on the results of two studies. Study I explores the main and interaction effects of the various dimensions of service recovery justice (i.e. distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice) on customer satisfaction, negative word‐of‐mouth (WOM), and repurchase intention based on the justice theory. Study II investigates whether the phenomenon of the service recovery paradox exists (i.e. whether customers have higher satisfaction, higher repurchase intention, and lower negative word‐of‐mouth after experiencing an effectively remedied service failure as compared to if the service failure had not occurred). A laboratory experimental design is used to test the research hypotheses.

The results show that distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice have a significant positive influence on customer satisfaction. Among the three dimensions of service recovery justice, only distributive justice has a significant positive influence on repurchase intention, and only interactional justice has a significant negative influence on negative WOM. Additionally, both the interaction between distributive justice and procedural justice and the interaction between distributive justice and interactional justice are found to significantly influence customer satisfaction, negative WOM, and repurchase intention. The results also indicate that the service recovery paradox does not appear to exist in the online retailing context.

The findings will allow online retailers to develop more effective strategies for preventing service failure and improving customer satisfaction, negative WOM, and repurchase intention.

This study contributes to the understanding of consumer responses to online retailer's service recovery after a service failure.

This paper aims to investigate whether the interactional effects of recommendation valence, tie strength and service type produce different effects on attitude and buying intention in a social networking context.

A 2 × 3 × 3 between-subject experiment was carried out, involving 616 participants, and MANOVA was used to test hypotheses.

The interactions of valence by tie strength and valence by service type affect attitude, but not intention. The review valence × tie strength × service type interaction influences both attitude and intention, and its effect on intention is fully mediated by attitude.

Negative recommendations for credence and experiential services communicated by individuals with no-tie relationships have a strong negative effect on attitude. However, positive recommendations from strong and weak ties for search and experience services are more influential than recommendations from no ties for credence services.

The results are explained by using cue sufficiency theory, which suggests that a single extreme cue serves as a defining feature.

This study aims to explore the role of restaurant experienscape in affecting diners' emotions and satisfaction with solo dining, considering the moderating role of solo dining willingness and public self-consciousness (PSC).

In total, 403 Korean customers who had dined alone at restaurants in the past three months participated in this study. Structural equation modeling, including multiple group analysis, was conducted to examine the hypotheses.

The dining atmosphere influenced solo diners' positive emotions but not their negative emotions. Responses from other guests and the interactional fairness of employees affected solo diners' negative emotions but not their positive emotions. Food sensory influences both positive and negative emotions. This study found that PSC significantly moderated the effect of the dining atmosphere on positive emotions, and solo dining willingness significantly moderated the impact of food sensory on positive emotions.

This study suggests that restaurant managers should pay close attention to providing fair service to all customers by training and educating employees because the unfair treatment that solo diners receive from employees affects focal customers' negative emotions.

The experienscape model was applied to the solo dining context based on Mehrabian and Russell's (1974) stimulus–organism–response paradigm and Pizam and Tasci's (2019) experienscape concept, which reflects the growing trend in solo dining.

The customer retail experience is frequently interrupted by disturbances such as ringing phones and other people. Employees must be able to respond to retail disturbances effectively to ensure that customers have a satisfactory experience in the retailer. Using Affective Events Theory as a framework, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model for understanding how retail disturbances affect customers outcomes and how retail employee response mitigates the negative impact of retail disturbances.

The model was tested using a pre-study of retail managers and consumers, a survey study and four experimental studies.

Retail disturbances reduce interactional justice and customer positive emotions. Customers pay attention to how employees address retail disturbances, even when they are not directly involved.

The research experiments focus on sound-based disturbances. Other stimuli (e.g. olfactory or visual) should be examined in more detail.

Employees can mitigate the negative effects of retail disturbances on customers with a positive response to the disturbance and to customers. Employee responses influence customers currently receiving service and nearby shoppers.

The findings demonstrate the deleterious effect of solicitation calls on small retailers and provide recommendations for reducing solicitation calls.

This research shows that retail disturbances reduce customer outcomes, employee response becomes part of the disturbance event, and that it is possible for employees to address a group of nearby customers indirectly through unintentional observation.

Emotional responses to complaint experiences have received limited research interest. The current paper seeks to address this gap by considering the role of perceived justice in the elicitation of differential emotions following complaint‐handling experiences.

Service scenario scripts were devised to depict a complaint‐handling encounter in relation to holiday check‐in arrangements. The scripts, which varied in terms of levels of interactional, procedural and distributive justice, were presented to a total of 384 respondents. Respondents were asked to imagine themselves as the person in the scenario and to indicate the extent to which different emotional adjectives described their reaction to the complaint‐handling encounter.

Analyses of variance (ANOVA) revealed that perceived justice evaluations were predictive of the type of emotion (i.e. positive or negative) elicited.

Existing theoretical frameworks focus primarily on cognitive evaluations of perceived justice associated with the complaint‐handling encounter; the findings of the current study suggest that a cognitive appraisal of perceived justice may also elicit an emotional response, which in turn is expected to impact on satisfaction with complaint handling.

With a better understanding of the nature and causes of the emotions experienced by customers during service recovery, it should be possible to implement and manage recovery systems that are designed to elicit strongly positive evaluative judgements from consumers.

Demonstrates that different degrees of justice during service recovery will impact on consumers' emotional states.

This paper aims to investigate the role of perceived justice in service consumption/purchase experiences.

In an initial study, using the critical incident method, the authors show that customers are strongly concerned by perceived injustice. Their judgments involve the three components of justice described in organizational and service marketing literature: distributive, procedural and interactional justice. They also identify a macro‐level justice factor which characterizes the perception of collective practices at the industry level. In an experiment applied to the dining experience, the authors manipulate distributive, procedural and interactional justice perception to study their impact on service evaluation (quality, value), satisfaction and relationship quality (trust, commitment).

Contrary to the satisfaction literature, the authors observe a slight direct effect of justice on satisfaction, but rather indirect impacts through perceived quality (outcome and interaction) and value. Moreover, perception of justice has substantial effects on trust (credibility and benevolence) but not on commitment.

The paper studies the impact of justice in the context of a customer experience evaluation (service delivery) which is not limited to service recovery. It examines the entire evaluation process, including service evaluation (quality, value), satisfaction and relationship quality (trust, commitment).

Drawing on consumer behavior and service marketing literature, the aim of this paper is to empirically examine how customers' justice judgment and consumption emotions affect customer relationships and their post consumption behaviors in a service recovery context.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was adopted to test the conceptual model, using a sample of nearly 600 delayed airline passengers.

Perceived justice and consumption emotions are important elements affecting customers' evaluation of service recovery. The three dimensions of service recovery justice and customers' positive and negative emotions have direct or indirect influence on customers' satisfaction with service recovery (SSR), customer trust, and their repurchase intentions and word‐of‐mouth recommendations. Theoretical and managerial implications were drawn based on the findings.

The current study sought to extend the existing literature by not only analyzing the effects of perceived justice and consumption emotions on satisfaction with service recovery (SSR), but also investigating how customer SSR would influence their sense of trust for the company and their behavioral intentions. In addition, many prior studies adopted experimental methods and post survey methods. Those methods have various validity problems. This study attempted to overcome those problems by using on‐the‐spot investigation methods to study customers' evaluation of service recovery in real service failure situations.

This study aims to identify the influences that lead to better memorability of a service by focusing on type of service failure, recovery condition and frequency of occurring.

This study used a quasi-experimental design in which customers answered questions about a restaurant they had recently patronized and then evaluated experimentally generated failure and recovery scenarios. Two follow-up contacts were made (by phone and e-mail) to assess their memory of the imagined service failures stimulated by the scenarios. Participants were asked how clearly and vividly they could recollect the service failure and to indicate their behavioral intentions at the time of recall.

The type of service failure and the subsequent recovery efforts significantly affect whether negative service experiences are memorable. Specifically, individuals showed a higher likelihood of vividly recalling a core service failure than an interactional one. Moreover, service recoveries were found to be helpful in decreasing the memorability of service failures, and that they were effective in decreasing the resulting negative customer behavioral intentions (i.e. switching behaviors and negative word-of-mouth). However, frequently occurred service failures did not significantly influence the memorability of the failures.

The current study suggested what characteristics of service failures and situations lead to strong memorability and significantly affect future behavior. Thus, the findings provide important implications for avoiding and handling the failures that trigger strong memorability.

Previous researchers have emphasized on the importance and urgency of preventing critical service failures. However, it is still unclear what type of service failures and/or factors are critical ones. The current study expands the knowledge by incorporating service failures with memory and investigates the characteristics of memorable service failures, which are likely to be remembered more vividly.

In this chapter, we summarize and build on the current state of the customer mistreatment literature in an effort to further future research on this topic. First, we detail the four primary conceptualizations of customer mistreatment. Second, we present a multilevel model of customer mistreatment, which distinguishes between the unfolding processes at the individual employee level and the service encounter level. In particular, we consider the antecedents and outcomes unique to each level of analysis as well as mediators and moderators. Finally, we discuss important methodological concerns and recommendations for future research.