Brand Reputation: Does it Help Customers Cope with Service Failure?
When service failure occurs, customers experience disconfirmation and feel displeased (Smith, Bolton and Wagner, 1999). Prior studies indicate that customers maintain different levels of service expectations for high and low reputed brands (Roggeveen, Bha
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Avoidance (AV): Consumers cope with negative experiences by doing other things to distract from the problem (Duhachek, 2005). Denial (DEN): Consumers may cope by pretending that the stressful encounter never happened. Denial serves the function of managing one’s emotions (Duhachek, 2005). Impact of Failure Severity on Consumer Coping Strategies The perceived severity of failure is a key determinant in forming post-failure attitudes and intentions. According to Duhachek and Kelting (2009), customers use a repertoire of coping strategies in managing the stressful encounter. The failure severity might affect the assessment of the encounter and the subsequent use of coping strategies (Gabbott et al. 2011). When customers perceive the service failure as severe, they may consciously take efforts to reduce the greater perceived loss and negative emotions. They ponder on the causes and consequences of the failure and actively engage in effortful actions to resolve the situation. Further, severe failure evokes anger which intensifies expressive tendencies and retaliatory behaviors (Bonefield and Cole, 2007). Thus, we expect customers to use action, emotional venting and instrumental-support seeking to manage severe failures. On the contrary, when customers experience less severe failures, they evaluate the potential loss as low and might ignore the negative emotions. Proposition 1: Satisfaction and behavioral intentions are determined by the severity of failure Proposition 2: Use of coping strategies of (a) action coping, (b) rational thinking, (c) positive thinking, (d) emotional venting, (e) instrumental-support seeking, (f) emotional-support seeking, (g) avoidance and (h) denial are determined by the severity of the service failure. Mediation Effect of Coping Strategies In the present study, we propose that when service failure occurs, the perceived stress triggers different coping strategies that affect the customer evaluation of service encounter. In case of coping strategies such as action and instrumental-support seeking, customers appraise the stressful encounter as severe and unalterable (Oakland and Ostell, 1996). This results in unfavourable evaluation of customer satisfaction. Thus, it is proposed that action and instrumental-support seeking coping strategies will be negatively associated with evaluation of customer outcomes following a service failure. On the other hand, the use of coping strategies such as positive thinking, rational thinking, emotional venting and emotional-support seeking results in reinterpretation of the stressful encounter (Gabbott et al. 2011). This results in more favorable evaluation of customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Proposition 3: The coping strategies mediate the relationship between failure severity and customer outcomes. Moderating Role of Brand Reputation on Coping Strategies And Customer Outcomes Brand reputation refers to the customers’ perception of service quality associated with the brand name (Selnes, 1998). Brands with high reputation reduce the perceived ri
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