Frustration and Anger Mitigation After Service Failure: The Effect of Other Consumer’s Explanation and Employee’s Explanation on Frustration and Anger After the Service Failure

PURPOSE: Based on the attribution and appraisal theories of emotion, this study investigates whether a consumer’s frustration and anger after a service failure reduces in different ways after hearing explanations from different sources (other customer vs employee vs none) under different blame attribution circumstances (situational vs service provider), and its subsequent influence on complaining intention. METHODS: In Study 1, valid data from 239 participants (46.9% female, M(age)=35.6 years) were used to test the interaction effect of the explanation source and blame attribution on frustration and anger. In Study 2, using valid answers from 253 students at Korea University (57.9% female, M(age)=20.9 years), Study 1 was replicated and, in addition, tested the moderated mediating impact on complaining intention. The overall theoretical model was tested with ANOVA and Hayes process model 8. RESULTS: When blame attribution was situational, the employee’s explanation did not mitigate either frustration or anger, whereas the other customer’s explanation mitigated frustration but not anger. In contrast, when blame attribution was towards the service provider, the employee’s explanation mitigated both frustration and anger, whereas the other customer’s explanation mitigated only frustration. In addition, the mitigation of frustration and anger by other customers subsequently led to a decrease in complaining intention, which was stronger and only significant when blame attribution was situational. However, only anger acted as a mediator between the employee’s explanation and complaining intention, which did not vary according to blame attribution. CONCLUSION: The results of the study advance the current knowledge on informational support as a service recovery process by suggesting the crucial role of other consumers in mitigating the target customer’s frustration, especially under situational service failure, which successively leads to a decrease in complaining intention, whereas the employee’s explanation decreases complaining intention only through the mitigation of anger.