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Based on appraisal theory and social response theory, this study aims to explore the mechanism of AI failure types on consumer recovery expectation from the perspective of service failure assessment and validate the moderate role of anthropomorphism level.

Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to validate the research model. First, to test the effect of robot service failure types on customer recovery expectation; second, to further test the mediating role of perceived controllability, perceived stability and perceived severity; finally, to verify the moderating effect of anthropomorphic level.

Non-functional failures reduce consumer recovery expectation compared to functional failures; perceived controllability and perceived severity play a mediating role in the impact of service failure types on recovery expectation; the influence of service failure types on perceived controllability and perceived severity is moderated by the anthropomorphism level.

The findings enrich the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of service failure types, and have implications for online enterprise follow-up service recovery and improvement of anthropomorphic design.

This study examines the effect of stable institutional investors on firms' product quality failures. Furthermore, the authors investigate the channels through which institutional ownership stability enhances product quality management.

This study uses probit, ordered probit and negative binomial regression frameworks to investigate the research questions. In addition, the authors utilize the three-stage least-squares to address the endogeneity issues.

Using a sample of product recall incidents from 2012 to 2021, the authors find that firms with more stable institutional ownership have a lower probability, frequency and severity of recall incidents and adopt a proactive product recall strategy. Institutional investors with significant and persistent holdings improve quality management by reducing overinvestment and the use of option-linked and relative performance executive compensations. Furthermore, the influence of stable institutional owners on product quality failures is more pronounced in firms with low managerial ability and specialist CEOs. Lastly, the empirical evidence demonstrates that stable holdings by active investors have a more substantial impact on reducing product recalls than passive and other stable institutional holdings.

This study is the first to examine the impact of institutional ownership stability on firms' product recalls. The authors contribute to the literature on the benefits of stable institutional ownership on firm outcomes and the determinants of product quality failures.

This study aims to quantify and prioritize the main causes of lean wastes and to apply reduction methods by employing better waste cause identification methodologies.

We employed fuzzy techniques for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (FTOPSIS), fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP), and failure mode effect analysis (FMEA) to determine the causes of defects. To determine the current defect cause identification procedures, time studies, checklists, and process flow charts were employed. The study focuses on the sewing department of a clothing industry in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

These techniques outperform conventional techniques and offer a better solution for challenging decision-making situations. Each lean waste’s FMEA criteria, such as severity, occurrence, and detectability, were examined. A pairwise comparison revealed that defect has a larger effect than other lean wastes. Defects were mostly caused by inadequate operator training. To minimize lean waste, prioritizing their causes is crucial.

The research focuses on a case company and the result could not be generalized for the whole industry.

The study used quantitative approaches to quantify and prioritize the causes of lean waste in the garment industry and provides insight for industrialists to focus on the waste causes to improve their quality performance.

The methodology of integrating FMEA with FAHP and FTOPSIS was the new contribution to have a better solution to decision variables by considering the severity, occurrence, and detectability of the causes of wastes. The data collection approach was based on experts’ focus group discussion to rate the main causes of defects which could provide optimal values of defect cause prioritization.

This research aims to investigate the influence of consumers' anticipated trust in service providers on brand switching intention and its underlying psychological mechanism. More importantly, this study explores the moderating role of type of service providers (human staff/humanoid robots/nonhumanoid robots).

This study adopted two single-factor between-subjects experimental designs and tested the hypotheses in two typical service failure scenarios: Study 1, a hotel scenario (N = 403); and Study 2, a restaurant scenario (N = 323).

The results suggest that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between consumers' anticipated trust and tolerance of service failure and that such tolerance has a mediating effect on the relationship between anticipated trust and brand switching intention. Moreover, when service failure is caused by a humanoid service robot, a moderate anticipated trust level of consumers is most conducive to increasing tolerance, which in turn reduces their propensity to switch brands.

This study examines the nature of the relationship between anticipated trust and tolerance in a service failure context, revealing an inverted U-shaped relationship. More importantly, the boundary conditions under which different service provides have an influence on this relationship are incorporated. Finally, this study explores the influence of service failure tolerance on brand switching intentions in a technological context, enriching consumer–brand relationship research.

This paper aims to enable the analysts of reliability and safety systems to evaluate the risk and prioritize failure modes ideally to prefer measures for reducing the risk of undesired events.

To address the constraints considered in the conventional failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) method for criticality assessment, the authors propose a new hybrid model combining different multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used to construct a criticality matrix and calculate the weights of different criteria based on five criticalities: personnel, equipment, time, cost and quality. In addition, a preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation (PROMETHEE) method is used to improve the prioritization of the failure modes. A comparative work in which the robust data envelopment analysis (RDEA)-FMEA approach was used to evaluate the validity and effectiveness of the suggested approach and simplify the comparative analysis.

This work aims to highlight the real case study of the automotive parts industry. Using this analysis enables assessing the risk efficiently and gives an alternative ranking to that acquired by the traditional FMEA method. The obtained findings offer that combining of two multi-criteria decision approaches and integrating their outcomes allow for instilling confidence in decision-makers concerning the risk assessment and the ranking of the different failure modes.

This research gives encouraging outcomes concerning the risk assessment and failure modes ranking in order to reduce the frequency of occurrence and gravity of the undesired events by handling different forms of uncertainty and divergent judgments of experts.

The authors' research examines how negative electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) alters focal customers' post-recovery justice perceptions and attitudes to determine their future behavior with the service provider. Specifically, this paper develops and tests a conceptual model to investigate how negative e-WOM alters focal customers' perceptual and attitudinal outcomes after the service recovery experience. It also examines the post-recovery effect of negative e-WOM on focal customers’ willingness to patronize the service after their recovery experience.

To test the hypotheses, two pretests and two experimental studies with created scenarios in the retail context were conducted.

The authors' findings reveal that services are judged during and well beyond failure and recovery occurrences. To maintain a loyal customer base, service managers should develop processes that address service complaints both within and beyond the service consumption stage. The authors also find that despite a favorable recovery, focal customers gravitate toward the failure experience and develop unfavorable attitudes toward the service provider, leading to likely defections.

The authors' research demonstrates the persuasive power of negative e-WOM at the post-service recovery stage, making a unique contribution to the service recovery literature. This research also contributes to the persuasive effect of negative e-WOM, demonstrating message context as a boundary condition of negative e-WOM effects. In general, the authors' work highlights the importance of understanding the psychological processes involved in eliciting the persuasive influence of negative e-WOM in the post-service recovery stage that may lead to the defection of “so-called” successfully recovered customers.

Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify their social worlds or reaffirm the status quo. Thus, reality breakdowns are the initial points at which actors can conceive of new possibilities for institutional arrangements and initiate change processes to realize them. Studying reality breakdowns enables scholars to understand not just how institutional change occurs, but also why it does or does not do so. In this paper, we investigate how institutional inhabitants responded to a reality breakdown that occurred during our ethnography of collegial governance in a large North American university that was undergoing a strategic change initiative. Our findings suggest that there is a consequential process following reality breakdowns whereby institutional inhabitants construct the severity of these events. In our context, institutional inhabitants first attempted to restore order to their social world by reaffirming the status quo; when their efforts failed, they began to formulate alternative possibilities. Simultaneously, they engaged in a distributed sensemaking process whereby they diminished and reoriented necessary changes, ultimately inhibiting the formulation of these new possibilities. Our findings confirm reality breakdowns and institutional awareness as potential drivers of institutional change and complicate our understanding of antecedent microprocesses that may forestall the initiation of change efforts.

The purpose of this study is to examine how robotic anthropomorphism and personalized design may affect consumers' reactions to brands after service failure.

This study conducted two studies based on cognitive appraisal theory and artificial intelligence device acceptance theory. Study 1 explored the mechanisms by which the type of anthropomorphic design of the service robot (humanoid robot/nonhumanoid robot) influenced revisit intention after service failure through a one-factor between-subjects design based on a restaurant dining scenario. Study 2 was based on a hotel check-in scenario and explored the moderating effect of robot personalization design on the above mechanisms through a 2 (anthropomorphic design: humanoid robot/nonhumanoid robot) × 2 (personalized design: self-name/no name) between-subjects design.

Study 1 shows that consumers have higher performance expectations for nonhumanoid robots, leading to a higher tolerance for service failure, which in turn generates higher revisit intentions. Study 2 shows that consumers' performance expectations are significantly enhanced after custom naming of humanoid robots, so the serial mediation mechanism for the effect of robot anthropomorphic design on revisit intention does not hold.

This study extends the research of artificial intelligence device acceptance theory in the field of service failure and exploratively proposes an intervention mechanism for the negative effects of the anthropomorphic design of service robots.

The purpose of this research is the exploration of online complainants' revenge based on their consumer-brand relationship strength and received webcare. The authors introduce inter-failures (i.e. the perceived number of earlier independent service failures that a customer has experienced with the same brand involved in the current service failure) as the central frame condition.

To test our hypotheses, both a scenario-based online experiment (n = 316) and an online survey (n = 492) were conducted.

With an increasing number of inter-failures, online complainants with a high-relationship strength move from the “love is blind” effect (no inter-failures) to the “love becomes hate” effect (multiple inter-failures), when they ultimately become more revengeful than their low-relationship strength counterparts. In addition, the authors show that in the case of no or few inter-failures, accommodative webcare has a lasting positive effect over no/defensive webcare for both low- and high-relationship complainants. More importantly, however, when consumers have experienced multiple inter-failures, accommodative webcare becomes ineffective (for low-relationship complainants) or boomerangs by cultivating revenge towards the brand (among high-relationship complainants), but not strategic avoidance.

The findings have pronounced implications for the literature on customer–brand relationships following service failures and the literature, which predominantly emphasizes the unconditionally positive effects of accommodative webcare.

This study is the first that simultaneously considers the prior customer–brand relationship, inter-failures and webcare to explain online complainants' revenge.

This study aims to investigate the responses of young Chinese consumers with different cultural characteristics to negative brand information about electric vehicles.

The current study is quantitative research with an experimental method. It shows two different levels of severity for negative publicity and asks participants to self-report through questionnaires.

Chinese young consumers, being collectivist and of high uncertainty avoidance, tend to search for and spread information; consumers with low power distance search and share information more under low information severity. In addition, information search positively affects brand attitude under lower severity; negative word-of-mouth intention negatively affects brand attitudes at both severity levels.

The current study examines the influence of personal cultural values on information searching and negative information dissemination among young consumers, providing insights to complement previous studies. Furthermore, it explores how such exposure influences young consumers’ brand attitude and intention to purchase. Limitations include simple sample scopes and single-product stimuli.

This research highlights the importance of cultural dimensions in shaping young consumers’ responses to negative publicity. Marketers worldwide should consider cultural influence and develop specific strategies to address negative information about different products. Understanding customers’ unique characteristics and preferences can help marketers effectively tailor their approaches to counter negative publicity.

This study originally provides a supplement to prior studies on cultural dimensions and consumer behavior and provides suggestions to marketers on young Chinese consumers.