Jiangang Du

An experimental investigation of the role of face in service failure and recovery encounters

Purpose – The concept of face has been deeply embedded in Chinese culture. This paper aims to examine the role of face in service failure and recovery encounters, and to explore the factors that influence customer emotions, recovery satisfaction and behavioral intention based on a proposed conceptual model.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a scenario role‐play‐based experimental design to examine the proposed conceptual model in service failure and recovery encounters.Findings – The results show that face plays an important role in service failure and recovery encounters. Specifically, it is found that the utilitarian recovery and symbolic recovery customers receive in the service recovery encounter can both influence customer face restoration, which in turn affects customer emotions, and behavioral intention on service recovery. Customer emotions are significantly correlated to customer recovery satisfaction.Practical implications – The practical implications of this study are mainly two‐fold....

Group Emotional Contagion and Complaint Intentions in Group Service Failure The Role of Group Size and Group Familiarity

Service failure is well documented in service marketing literature, which mainly focuses on service interactions between employees and individual customers. However, prior research has not examined customers’ emotional and behavioral responses during group service failure—that is, a service involving a group of customers who do not meet the expectations of all or the majority of the customers. Compared with service failure involving individual customers (individual service failure), customers in group service failure are likely to show different emotional and behavioral characteristics. The authors conduct two experiments and find that customers have higher levels of anger and complaint intentions in group service failure than in individual service failure. In addition, the displays of anger by surrounding customers are positively related to individual customers’ anger. Through a second experiment, this article further investigates the role of group size and group familiarity on group emotional contagion during group service failure. The results show that both group size and group familiarity moderate the relationship between the displays of anger by surrounding customers and an individual customer’s anger—that is, the effect of group emotional contagion is stronger in a large/familiar group than in a small/unfamiliar group. The results provide several theoretical and managerial implications for research in group service failure.

Delivering warmth by hand: customer responses to different formats of written communication

The effect of different formats of message delivery has received little theoretical and empirical examination. This research focuses on the effect of written relational communication formats used by service providers. This study aims to answer three questions: Do different formats of written communications (i.e. handwriting and print) influence customer perceptions (i.e. feelings of warmth) of service firms? What are the mediators of these influences (i.e. perceived effort and psychological closeness)? And under what conditions do they occur (i.e. what is the contextual factor)?,One field study and three laboratory studies were conducted to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role of format in written communication.,Handwritten messages are more effective than print messages in building relationships in a service context because they elicit stronger feelings of warmth because of both the perception of greater effort and feelings of greater psychological closeness to the service provider. However, the presence of handwriting fails to deliver feelings of warmth when the quality of core services is low.,Service providers can effectively use handwritten communication to signal effort and create psychological closeness for relationship building with their key customers only when the quality of core services meets customer expectations.,First, the research differentiates the formats of written relational communication (handwritten vs print), and links communication formats with feelings of warmth, which is an important factor for impression and relationship formation in the practice of services marketing. Second, based on cognitive-experiential self-theory, this research demonstrates the dual mediators underlying the effect of handwriting (vs print) on warmth: perceived effort and psychological closeness. Third, it identifies the quality of core service as a boundary condition for the effect of handwritten communication.

Structural Equation Model Analysis of Impact Factors on Scientific Research Motivation - Perspective on Self-Determination Theory

This article analyzed the intrinsic motivations and extrinsic motivations of scientific researches based on the self-determination theory (SDT). Established the structural equation model of scientific research motivation, the multilayer effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on scientific research were verified through the test of examples. Finally, some valuable management suggestions were given for scientific research units.

Employee's Emotion and Behaviour under the Circumstance of Emotional Events

High interaction is an important feature of service industry. During the process of service, staff would have high-frequently contact with customers, and the value of the corporation is delivered through these interactions. Normally there are some emotional events accompanying the process of service which will affect the emotion and attitude of the staff. Through reviewing literatures, the authors put forward an emotional model based on the high interactive service industry. The model has been proved by quantitative test under the catering circumstance. The paper concludes that the managers attitude oriented and events attribution will have positive im-pact on the emotion and attitude of the staff when an emo-tional event occurs. At the same time, emotional intelligence differences have moderate effect on the model. At the end of the paper, the authors discuss the conclusions, managerial implications, and the future direction.

The Review of the Emotional Contagion Theory Based on the Interpersonal Perspective

it has long been noted that emotions appear to be contagious, but until only recently the theory has been more thoroughly examined. In this study, the authors go through the whole theory based on the interpersonal perspective, discussing the mechanism of the emotional contagion, emotional contagion scale, the method of obtaining emotional contagion and the implementation of the theory. This paper tries to present a guideline for people who may interest in the emotional contagion what is the emotional contagion and how is should be. Through the analysis, the authors also give an discussion about the future development of emotional contagion in the service management.

Research of the Psychology and Behavior of Grouping Consumers Facing under Failure Conditions

The service failure is sometimes inevitable because of the high interaction characteristics of service products. Based on the experimental method of scene simulation, this research examines the negative emotion, the recovery expectation, the perception control and the complaining tendency of grouping consumers when facing with service failure, by using the SPSS software. Several conclusions are drawn by the research: (1) After the service failure, different types of grouping consumers react differently to exactly the same incidence due to the differences lying in the size of the groups and the familiarity among the members. (2) The size of the group has a significant influence to the perception control and the negative emotion of grouping consumers; the discontent emotion of consumers affects obviously their recovery expectation; the negative emotion and perception control have a co-effect to the complaining tendency.

Emotional and Satisfactory Research of Grouping Consumers in Service Recovery Process

The industrial service failure is sometimes inevitable and the effective way to re-win customers is through a successful service recovery. Compared with the individual service failure, the group service failure is more complex, thus the loss brought to the service enterprises is more serious. Meanwhile, the implementation of a reasonable remediation strategy and the restoration of community satisfaction will become more difficult. In this article, the service recovery model based on the grouping service failure was established. The proposed model conducts four kinds of experimental designs according to the attribution of responsibility in a service failure. By using the scenario simulation method, the 434 valid questionnaires were analyzed by using the SPSS method and the influence of symbolic compensation and leader persuasion to the recovery satisfactory degree is investigated. The experiment verifies that there is a great influence of symbolic compensation and persuasion to the emotion and satisfaction degree of grouping consumers. It is also proved that the positive emotion after recovery is in positive correlation with the group satisfaction and behavior; the negative emotion after recovery is in negative correlation with the group satisfaction and behavior.