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Coalitions and Their Negative Consequences: An Examination in Service Failure-Recovery Situations

The social nature of customer experiences creates complex and potentially detrimental dynamics in failure situations, such as when other customers side with the complainer or the firm. The present research is the first to analyze such coalitions and their consequences. We conceptualize a triad compo...

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Autores principales: Roschk, Holger, Hosseinpour, Masoumeh, Breitsohl, Jan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10522451/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37771800
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10946705231163884
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author Roschk, Holger
Hosseinpour, Masoumeh
Breitsohl, Jan
author_facet Roschk, Holger
Hosseinpour, Masoumeh
Breitsohl, Jan
author_sort Roschk, Holger
collection PubMed
description The social nature of customer experiences creates complex and potentially detrimental dynamics in failure situations, such as when other customers side with the complainer or the firm. The present research is the first to analyze such coalitions and their consequences. We conceptualize a triad composed of a complainer, a service employee, and one or multiple others as a third actor. A field study of consumer complaints on social media shows that coalitions occur in 32% of cases, negatively shifting the affective tone of an online conversation from approximately neutral to negative. Both third actor–complainer and third actor–service employee coalitions independently deteriorate the affective tone, their individual effects are not additive, and the third actor–complainer coalition exerts the larger impact of both coalitions. Two experiments reveal that complainers feel betrayed by the third actor when this actor sides with the service employee (vs. the complainer), which strengthens complainers’ satisfaction with taking steps as a recovery effort by the firm and weakens satisfaction with an offered apology. This research provides managerial insights into the practical significance of coalition effects, how coalitions impair firm response effectiveness, and under which conditions different responses sustain their effectiveness. It also presents several avenues for future research.
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spelling pubmed-105224512023-09-28 Coalitions and Their Negative Consequences: An Examination in Service Failure-Recovery Situations Roschk, Holger Hosseinpour, Masoumeh Breitsohl, Jan J Serv Res Articles The social nature of customer experiences creates complex and potentially detrimental dynamics in failure situations, such as when other customers side with the complainer or the firm. The present research is the first to analyze such coalitions and their consequences. We conceptualize a triad composed of a complainer, a service employee, and one or multiple others as a third actor. A field study of consumer complaints on social media shows that coalitions occur in 32% of cases, negatively shifting the affective tone of an online conversation from approximately neutral to negative. Both third actor–complainer and third actor–service employee coalitions independently deteriorate the affective tone, their individual effects are not additive, and the third actor–complainer coalition exerts the larger impact of both coalitions. Two experiments reveal that complainers feel betrayed by the third actor when this actor sides with the service employee (vs. the complainer), which strengthens complainers’ satisfaction with taking steps as a recovery effort by the firm and weakens satisfaction with an offered apology. This research provides managerial insights into the practical significance of coalition effects, how coalitions impair firm response effectiveness, and under which conditions different responses sustain their effectiveness. It also presents several avenues for future research. SAGE Publications 2023-03-30 2023-11 /pmc/articles/PMC10522451/ /pubmed/37771800 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10946705231163884 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Articles
Roschk, Holger
Hosseinpour, Masoumeh
Breitsohl, Jan
Coalitions and Their Negative Consequences: An Examination in Service Failure-Recovery Situations
title Coalitions and Their Negative Consequences: An Examination in Service Failure-Recovery Situations
title_full Coalitions and Their Negative Consequences: An Examination in Service Failure-Recovery Situations
title_fullStr Coalitions and Their Negative Consequences: An Examination in Service Failure-Recovery Situations
title_full_unstemmed Coalitions and Their Negative Consequences: An Examination in Service Failure-Recovery Situations
title_short Coalitions and Their Negative Consequences: An Examination in Service Failure-Recovery Situations
title_sort coalitions and their negative consequences: an examination in service failure-recovery situations
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10522451/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37771800
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10946705231163884
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