The nature of an apology: An experimental study on how to apologize after a service failure
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The nature of an apology: An experimental study on how to apologize after a service failure Holger Roschk & Susanne Kaiser
Published online: 9 December 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012
Abstract Extant service recovery research treats apology as a dichotomy, in that it is either present or absent, but how it is conveyed is neglected. Based upon social psychological research, this study argues that an apology comprises three different components: empathy, intensity, and timing, which make each apology unique. It is shown that how well an apology is delivered across failure types (outcome vs. process) drives service recovery satisfaction, not its mere presence. Empathy, intensity, and timing separately impact satisfaction. The more empathic and intense the apology is given, the more satisfied respondents are. A late apology decreases satisfaction ratings. Effect sizes indicate that empathy has the strongest impact on service recovery satisfaction followed by intensity and timing. The effect of empathy is stronger for process failures than for outcome failures. Interestingly, the apology’s overall effect size is comparable to that of compensation in case of a process failure. Keywords Service recovery . Apology . Failure type . Consumer complaints . Consumer satisfaction . Complaint management . Compensation
1 Introduction After a service failure, a salient organizational response to turn a dissatisfied customer into a satisfied one is to apologize for the service breakdown (e.g., Davidow 2003; Liao 2007). There is ample anecdotal and managerial indication for the power of an apology in recovering from failures (Brogan 2009; Fleming 2002). Consequently, a considerable amount of research studies analyze whether an apology is able to mitigate the ill effects of a service failure (e.g., Goodwin and Ross 1992; Mattila et H. Roschk (*) : S. Kaiser Catholic University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://www.ku-eichstaett.de/wwf/im/ S. Kaiser e-mail: [email protected]
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Mark Lett (2013) 24:293–309
al. 2009). Empirical results differ with regard to an apology’s effectiveness in recovering from service failures (Davidow 2003). A considerable amount of studies support that complainants, who receive an apology, are more satisfied than customers who receive no apology (e.g., Bradley and Sparks 2009; Coulter 2009; Wirtz and Mattila 2004). However, there is also empirical evidence that the presence of an apology does not necessarily recover from service failures (McDougall and Levesque 1999) nor fosters post-complaint satisfaction (de Ruyter and Wetzels 2000; Goodwin and Ross 1992; Ringberg and Christensen 2003; Wong 2004). Current research in the business domain suffers from one major drawback. Studies merely analyze what is said, i.e., the presence versus absence of an apology (e.g., Coulter 2009; de Ruyter and Wetzels 2000), but not how an apology is given. This void is surprising since social psychological research suggests that although what someone
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