Examining the Influence of Familiarity and its Paradoxical Effect on Service Failure Memory

Service failures in the hospitality industry often occur due to the inconsistent nature of hospitality and restaurant services, coupled with the inevitability of human error. Service failures cause negative emotional feelings that can lead to the development of a negative memorable experience for the customer. This research examines memory of service failures in the restaurant setting. Specifically, this study investigated whether customers’ familiarity with the service failure situations (i.e., familiarity with a restaurant and a frequently occurring service failure) affect memorability of the negative service experiences. The results suggest that individual’s’ familiarity with a restaurant is in decreasing memorability of service failures as well as intention to engage in negative future behavior (i.e., switching and negative word-of-mouth publicity). The results also demonstrated that divergent effect of familiarity occurs in service failure situations. Participants’ ability to recollect and vividly recall service failures differed based on the familiarity with a restaurant and frequency of occurrence of a service failure. The theoretical and managerial implications of this study are discussed in detail.