Negative Spillover Effects of Other-Customer Failure

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why other-customer failure has a negative influence on customer evaluation with the service provider. This study tries to determine which attribution dimensions concerning other-customer failure most influence customer's negative service evaluations. This research will not only assist managers in identifying what sort of causal attribution may contribute to the evaluation process underlying customer dissatisfaction, but it will also extend the existing knowledge on the study of negative interpersonal encounters in the service literature. Data was obtained from a survey of consumers by retrospective experience sampling. Our results show that attribution of firm responsibility for other-customer failure is positively related to customer's recovery expectation, in turns, has a negative effect on customer satisfaction. Furthermore, customer's perceived recovery effort of service provider has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Providing employees with the appropriate coping and problem-solving skills for working with problem customers is a key issue for service providers. More importantly, employees should be trained to help the affected customers, to alleviate any bad feelings caused by the other-customer's failure.