A Study of Preference and Attitude of Customers with Different Social Distances to Service Recovery in Service Encounter Failure

Abstract

Abstract:

In service encounter failure, customers' preference of service recovery varies from person to person. This paper tries to explain the reasons behind the phenomenon in the light of social distance with construal level theory, to test diverse preference of different social distance customer when given "discount" or "gift" service recovery in study 1, on this basis, to explore satisfaction differences of different social distance customer when given "discount" or "gift" service recovery under severe or mild encounter failure in study 2. The empirical results show that:(1) when receiving recovery of the same value, "close customers" prefer "gift", while "distant customers" prefer "discount". (2) In the case of severe encounter failure, on the one hand "close customers" have a higher satisfaction after recovery than that of "distant customers" when given "gift". On the other hand they have no significant difference when given "discount". In the case of mild encounter failure, "distant customers" have a higher satisfaction after recovery than "close customers" when given "discount", and there are opposite trends in satisfaction after recovery with "gift".

Key words: social distance, construal level theory, service encounter failure, severity of service failure, service recovery

Guo Shuai, Yin Chengyue, Su Jinglei. A Study of Preference and Attitude of Customers with Different Social Distances to Service Recovery in Service Encounter Failure[J]. , 2017, 29(12): 141-152.

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