The Impact Of Service Recovery To Other-Customer Misbehavior On Customer Satisfaction And Behavioral Intentions

Service encounters often occur in the presence of other customers who share the servicescape with each another. Other customers'misbehavior widely exists in service encounters and may impose additional financial or psychological costs on customers, impacting on customers'service consumption experience and satisfaction severely. To research the service recovery on this special occasion is of great practical and theoretical significance.However, the current research in this field is still limited. Based on Attribution Theory, Equity Theory, Expectation-Disconfirmation Theory, Circumplex Model of Affect and the previous service recovery research, this study focuses on the impact of service recovery to other-customer misbehavior on satisfaction and behavioral intentions from the perspective of customer perception, with the influence of severity of other-customer misbehavior analyzed as well.Using the Retrospective Experience Sampling technique, data were gathered from493customers regarding their perception after the most impressive experience of other-customer misbehavior in the past6months. Analysis of the data revealed:1)If customers perceive that the other-customer misbehavior is under the firm's control (i.e. controllability attribution), they consider the misbehavior to be the firm's responsibility.2) Customers'perceived firm responsibility and firm recovery efforts have interactive influence on customers'emotion. Namely:Low perceived firm responsibility and high perceived recovery efforts will lead to customers'pleasure, a high arousal level of the positive emotion; Low perceived firm responsibility and low perceived recovery efforts will lead to customers'dissatisfaction, a low arousal level of the negative emotion; High perceived firm responsibility and high perceived recovery efforts will lead to customers'satisfaction, a low arousal level of the positive emotion; High perceived firm responsibility and low perceived recovery efforts will lead to customers'rage, a high arousal level of the negative emotion.3)Different arousal levels of customers'emotion lead to significant difference in customer behavioral intentions. Customers with a higher arousal level of positive emotion have a significant higher repurchase intention and word of mouth intention. Customers with a higher arouse level of negative emotion have a higher complaining intention. However, angry and dissatisfied customers don't show significant difference in their revenge intention.4) When the customer misbehavior is very severe, even the perceived responsibility is low and the perceived recovery efforts is high, customers will not feel pleasant, the positive emotion will be lowered down to satisfaction. When the customer misbehavior is very severe, the perceived responsibility is high and the perceived recovery efforts are high, customers will not feel satisfied, instead they feel indifferent. When the customer misbehavior is very severe, the perceived responsibility is low and the perceived recovery efforts are low, customers will not just feel dissatisfied, instead they feel angry. When the customer misbehavior is very severe, the perceived responsibility is high and the perceived recovery efforts are low, customers will still feel angry. That's to say the severity of the customer misbehavior lowers the positive effects of the firm recovery efforts on customers' emotional reaction and enlarges the negative effects of the perceived firm responsibility on customers'emotional reaction.5) Higher level of severity of customer misbehavior is positively related to customers'complaint intention. But the different extent of severity doesn't show significant impact on customers'repurchase, word of mouth and revenge intentions.Finally, implications for those who manage service organizations are posited.