Customer satisfaction, service failure, and service ...

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Customer satisfaction, service failure, and service recovery Buy this file from http://www.download-it.org/learning-resources.php?promoCode=&partnerID=&content=story&storyID=1620

Anna S. Mattila and Heejung Ro

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Customer satisfaction, service failure, and service recovery

Introduction This chapter critically reviews conceptualizations and empirical evidence in support of customer satisfaction, service failure, and service recovery and their role in hospitality and tourism management. One of the most basic principles in hospitality marketing is that organizational performance is enhanced by satisfying customers. Satisfaction is a major outcome of marketing activity and it links decision-making processes and consumption with post-purchase phenomena, such as attitude change, complaining behavior, word-of-mouth, repeat purchase and brand loyalty (e.g., Oliver, 1980). Although hospitality and tourism organizations may consider customer satisfaction as a major goal, not all service experiences are satisfactory from the customer’s perspective (Ennew and Shoefer, 2003). Service failures can, and often do, occur. One reason for these failures is the labor-intensive nature of the hospitality industry, which inevitably leads to more heterogeneous outcomes compared to goods production processes (Kotler et al., 2006). Service performance variability and failures also arise from the inseparability of service production and consumption. Given the relatively high frequency of service failures, service recovery has been identified as one of the key ingrediBuy this file from http://www.download-it.org/learning-resources.php?promoCode=&partnerID=&content=story&storyID=1620 ents for achieving customer loyalty (e.g., Tax and Brown, 2000). As a result, developing an effective service recovery policy has become an important focus of many customer retention strategies (Smith et al., 1999). Service recovery strategies involve actions taken by service providers to respond to service failures (Grönroos, 2000). Both what is done (compensation) and how it is done (employee interaction with the customer) influence customer perceptions of service recovery (e.g., Levesque and McDougall, 2000). This chapter provides a critical analysis of the literature on customer satisfaction, service failure, and service recovery in the field of hospitality and tourism management and identifies several strategies that hospitality organizations can implement in response to dissatisfying service experiences. Following a brief overview of the conceptualization and measurement of the constructs of interest, an attempt is made to bring to the reader’s attention the importance of broadening the scope of research in this field. This approach naturally indicates avenues that future research might fruitfully explore. The chapter concludes by presenting a comprehensive framework for the customer’s post-purchase evaluation processes.

Background Customer satisfaction What is customer satisfaction? Despite extensive research on satisfaction, researchers cannot agree on a common definition for the concept. Oliver (1997) addresses this

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Handbook of Hospitality Marketing Management

definitional issue by noting that “everyone knows what satisfaction is until asked to give a definition. Then it seems, nobody knows” (p. 13). Due to its elusive nature, the literature is replete with different conceptual and operational definitions of consumer satisfaction. Most definitions favor the notion of consumer satisfaction as an evaluative process. Specifically, there is an overriding theme of consumer satisfaction as a summary concept [i.e., a fulfillment response (Oliver, 1997); overall evaluation (Fornell, 1992); summary attribute phenomenon (Oliver, 1992)]. Satisfaction is also often viewed as an attitude-like judgment based on a series of consumer–product interactions (Yi, 1990). However, there is disagreement concerning the nature of this summary concept. Researchers portray consumer satisfaction as either a cognitive or an affective response. For example, Westbrook and Reilly (1983, p. 256) refer to satisfaction as ‘an emotional response,’ while Howard and Sheth (1969, p. 145) consider satisfaction as ‘a buyer’s cognitive state.’ More recent definitions seem to incorporate emotions (Giese and Cote, 2000), and there are several conceptual and operational definitions indicating that satisfaction is a mixed response comprised of both cognitive Buy this file from http://www.download-it.org/learning-resources.php?promoCode=&partnerID=&content=story&storyID=1620 and affective dimensions (e.g., Oliver, 1997). Recent research indicates that the relative importance of affect versus cognition on satisfaction judgments might be time-dependent (Cote et al., 1989). For example, Homburg et al. (2006) show that the impact of cognition on satisfaction evaluations increases over time while the role of affect diminishes. Although satisfaction has been conceptualized in terms of either a single transaction (i.e., an evaluative judgment following the purchase occasion) or a series of interactions with a product over time, Anderson and Fornell (1994) note that nearly all satisfaction research has adopted the former, transaction-specific view. Indeed, several scholars have criticized the marketing field for treating satisfaction as a static evaluation derived from a single trial event. The single-transaction view is particularly problematic for hospitality and tourism services that typically are composed of a series of service encounters within a single consumption experience. For example, tourism is a high-involvement, high-risk purchase, thus leading to a complex evaluation process with no predictable critical evaluation point (Bowen and Clarke, 2002). While some researchers focus on a single aspect of the travel experience such as shopping satisfaction (Heung and Cheng, 2000; Reisinger and Turner, 2002), others include multiple attribute dimensions such as tourist attractions, facilities, services, and prices (Yu and Goulden, 2006) and satisfaction with the tour provider and tour package (Hsu, 2000). Middleton and Clarke (2001), for instance, demonstrate the interdependence of various components of the travel package in driving overall satisfaction (i.e., a medley of products). Tourists are thus likely to evaluate their travel • • •

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