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Stopping the Spread: How Blame Attributions Drive Customer-to-Customer Misbehavior Contagion and What Frontline Employees Can Do to Curb It

Service encounters nowadays are increasingly characterized by customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions where customers regularly become targets of other customers’ misbehavior. Although previous research provides initial evidence of the contagiousness of such C2C misbehavior, it remains unclear wheth...

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Autores principales: Danatzis, Ilias, Möller-Herm, Jana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9899682/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10946705221150441
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author Danatzis, Ilias
Möller-Herm, Jana
author_facet Danatzis, Ilias
Möller-Herm, Jana
author_sort Danatzis, Ilias
collection PubMed
description Service encounters nowadays are increasingly characterized by customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions where customers regularly become targets of other customers’ misbehavior. Although previous research provides initial evidence of the contagiousness of such C2C misbehavior, it remains unclear whether, how, and why C2C misbehavior spreads when frontline employees (FLEs) are involved and what FLEs can do to curb it. Two online and one field experiment in the context of co-working and transportation services reveal that FLE-directed blame attributions drive the spread of C2C misbehavior while perpetrator-directed blame attributions reverse it. These blame attributions are greater the more severely customers judge other customers’ misbehavior. Findings further rule out alternative contagion mechanisms (social norms and emotional contagion) and show that contagion spills over to C2C misbehavior unrelated to the initial transgression. By specifying how contagion unfolds and by explicating the central role blame attributions play in C2C misbehavior contagion, this research uncovers its social dynamics, thus extending existing theory on customer misbehavior and attribution theory in multi-actor settings. Managerially, this research provides FLEs with explicit guidance on what they should do (personalized FLE interventions delivered either in person or remotely) and avoid doing (disapproving looks, FLE service recovery) when faced with C2C misbehavior.
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spelling pubmed-98996822023-02-06 Stopping the Spread: How Blame Attributions Drive Customer-to-Customer Misbehavior Contagion and What Frontline Employees Can Do to Curb It Danatzis, Ilias Möller-Herm, Jana J Serv Res Articles Service encounters nowadays are increasingly characterized by customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions where customers regularly become targets of other customers’ misbehavior. Although previous research provides initial evidence of the contagiousness of such C2C misbehavior, it remains unclear whether, how, and why C2C misbehavior spreads when frontline employees (FLEs) are involved and what FLEs can do to curb it. Two online and one field experiment in the context of co-working and transportation services reveal that FLE-directed blame attributions drive the spread of C2C misbehavior while perpetrator-directed blame attributions reverse it. These blame attributions are greater the more severely customers judge other customers’ misbehavior. Findings further rule out alternative contagion mechanisms (social norms and emotional contagion) and show that contagion spills over to C2C misbehavior unrelated to the initial transgression. By specifying how contagion unfolds and by explicating the central role blame attributions play in C2C misbehavior contagion, this research uncovers its social dynamics, thus extending existing theory on customer misbehavior and attribution theory in multi-actor settings. Managerially, this research provides FLEs with explicit guidance on what they should do (personalized FLE interventions delivered either in person or remotely) and avoid doing (disapproving looks, FLE service recovery) when faced with C2C misbehavior. SAGE Publications 2023-02-03 2023-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9899682/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10946705221150441 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial 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
Danatzis, Ilias
Möller-Herm, Jana
Stopping the Spread: How Blame Attributions Drive Customer-to-Customer Misbehavior Contagion and What Frontline Employees Can Do to Curb It
title Stopping the Spread: How Blame Attributions Drive Customer-to-Customer Misbehavior Contagion and What Frontline Employees Can Do to Curb It
title_full Stopping the Spread: How Blame Attributions Drive Customer-to-Customer Misbehavior Contagion and What Frontline Employees Can Do to Curb It
title_fullStr Stopping the Spread: How Blame Attributions Drive Customer-to-Customer Misbehavior Contagion and What Frontline Employees Can Do to Curb It
title_full_unstemmed Stopping the Spread: How Blame Attributions Drive Customer-to-Customer Misbehavior Contagion and What Frontline Employees Can Do to Curb It
title_short Stopping the Spread: How Blame Attributions Drive Customer-to-Customer Misbehavior Contagion and What Frontline Employees Can Do to Curb It
title_sort stopping the spread: how blame attributions drive customer-to-customer misbehavior contagion and what frontline employees can do to curb it
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9899682/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10946705221150441
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