The Impact of Service Failure and Recovery on Target and Observing Customers: A Comparative Study

ABSTRACT

This research investigates how target and observing customers react to service failure and recovery. Previous research has focused on the effect of service recovery on target customers. It has been assumed that the reactions of those customers observing the recovery efforts would mirror those of target customers, or perhaps be even more favorable, given that they are not directly affected by the service failure. This research challenges this pre-conception. Through three experiments, this paper shows that often greater recovery efforts are required to improve the evaluation of observing customers than that of target customers. This research explores the reasons behind this counterintuitive finding and concludes with a discussion of its theoretical and managerial implications.

本研究探讨目标和观察顾客对服务失败和恢复的反应。以往的研究主要集中在服务补救对目标客户的影响上。据认为，那些观察恢复工作的客户的反应会反映目标客户的反应，或者可能更为有利，因为它们没有直接受到服务失败的影响。这项研究挑战了前概念。通过三个实验，本文指出，提高观察顾客的评价要比目标顾客多。本研究探讨了这一违反直觉的发现背后的原因，并讨论了它的理论和管理含义。

KEYWORDS:

• Observers
• service failure
• service recovery
• targets