Does the type of service failure matter? The effects of customer participation on customer’s responsibility attribution of service failure

while there is a general agreement with respect to the significant effect of customer participation on the negative responses of customers when service failures occur, researchers do not present consistent or conclusive findings as to whether customer participation serves to buffer or magnify the negative impact of failures on service outcomes. Then, are there any factors to reconcile these inconsistent evidences? We examine the effects of customer participation on customers’reactions to service failure under the distinct failure conditions (process failure versus outcome failure).The results show that when the outcome failure occurs, customer participation prior to the failure can serve to buffer the negative customer responses following failures, while customer participation can magnify the negative customer responses following the outcome failure.