Research On The Impact Of Service Failure Events On Negative Word-of-mouth Communication In Online Shopping Context

In recent years,the rapid development of the Internet has continuously changed people’s way of life.With the popularization of the network,the application of e-commerce is also becoming more and more mature,which makes the online consumption model constantly rising,and the online shopping is going deeper and deeper into consumers’ lives.However,every coin has two sides.Although online shopping has provided us many convenient services,its rapid development has also brought more service failure challenges to enterprises.Problems of online service failures such as poor online shopping experience,inconsistency between real objects and pictures,poor service attitude of enterprises,and product quality defects emerge one after another,causing many online consumption disputes.Compared with offline shopping,online shopping has the characteristics of virtual and long-distance,which leads to a higher probability of consumer expectation gap,and online shopping service failures are almost unavoidable.Turning a blind eye to it can amplify consumer discontent,further increase negative word of mouth and seriously hurt corporate profits.Therefore,how to reduce negative word-of-mouth communication after service failures is an important concern of business competition.By combing the relevant literature,it is found that previous scholars have less research on the antecedent variables of negative word-of-mouth communication,which are mainly divided into individual factors and social factors.Among them,service failure,as an important social factor,has great research value.In the past,the connotation of service failure was mainly defined from the perspective of consumers’ subjective perception.Few scholars took it as an objective negative event and used empirical research method to explore its impact mechanism on consumers’ negative word-of-mouth from three aspects: event spatial origin,intensity and time factors,and lacked certain theoretical integration.Therefore,in the context of online shopping,based on the event system theory and the Stimulus-Organism-Response(S-O-R)theory,this paper takes service failure events(attribution,severity,and duration)as independent variables,and consumers’ forgiveness willingness as the mediating variable,negative word-of-mouth communication as the dependent variable,constructs the research model of this paper.Discuss what impact the service failure events(S)will have on the consumers’ psychology,that is,the consumers’ forgiveness willingness(O),which in turn affects the negative word-of-mouth communication(R).Through the questionnaire survey of 377 consumers,and then using data processing software to analyze the data,the following conclusions are obtained: attribution,severity and duration have a significant negative impact on consumers’ willingness to forgive;consumers’ willingness to forgive plays a significant mediating role in the influence path of attribution,severity and persistence on negative word-of-mouth communication.The research results expand the research field of service failures and negative word-of-mouth communication,which can help enterprises grasp the psychological activities of consumers in the context of online service failures,guide enterprises to take correct remedial measures,and reduce the negative word-of-mouth communication of consumers.