Other Customer Service Failures: Emotions,Impacts,and Attributions

Abstract

While customer-to-customer interactions are frequent in hospitality and tourism settings, very little research investigates the effects of other customers and other customer-generated service failures. Using the critical incident technique, this research builds on theory and provides important managerial implications in the areas of other customers, attributions, and service failure. Results find that customers experience emotions, including anger, frustration, and sympathy. In addition, even though customers attribute that the other customers are responsible for the failure, they still formed negative perceptions and behaviors toward the firm. Third, results find that management often did nothing to recover from the failure, which further exacerbated negative perceptions and behaviors.

Keywords

other customer customer-to-customer interaction service failure service recovery lodging attribution critical incident technique data and theory

Introduction

The presence of other customers is unavoidable in many service settings, especially in hospitality and tourism. As such, customers naturally affect each other during the service experience. Despite the importance of other customers in service settings, research examining their influence is limited (Brocato, Voorhees, & Baker, 2012; Miao & Mattila, 2013). This is especially critical as sharing the service environment with other customers is often an inherent part of the hospitality and tourism experience (Miao & Mattila, 2013). Researchers note that customer-to-customer interactions can either enhance or damage the service experience (W. H. Huang & Wang, 2014). Customer-to-customer service failures occur on a regular basis partly because service failures are inevitable. In addition, as most hospitality environments represent shared territory and space for customers, other customers’ misbehavior can significantly affect the observing customers’ emotional state (W. H. Huang & Wang, 2014; Miao, 2014; Miao, Mattila, & Mount, 2011; Wu, Mattila, & Han, 2014). A new direction for advancing our understanding of service failure and customer-to-customer interaction would be to research the perceptions and behaviors of customers following a service failure (Nicholls, 2010), known hereafter as the perceptions of other customer service failure (OCSF).

Very little is known about what service organizations should do to relieve the affected customers of unpleasant feelings related to other customer misbehavior (W. H. Huang, 2010). This is especially important in hospitality and tourism contexts where poorly behaving customers affect the focal customer negatively (Hyun & Han, 2013). One study finds that the presence of others can affect attitudes, intentions, and behaviors (W. H. Huang & Wang, 2014) yet more research is needed to assist firms in managing customer-to-customer experiences (Zhang, Beatty, & Mothersbaugh, 2010). Critical incident technique (CIT), an important technique used in service research, (Reynolds & Harris, 2005; Ro & Wong, 2012) is a rich source of data. CIT method asks respondents to recall a critical incident and describe the incident in detail. The responses are then content analyzed and coded (Gremler, 2004). As such, CIT is a useful method for providing rich data for other customer-generated service failure.

With regard to service failure generated by others, it is evident that the failure should be attributed to the customer. However, is the firm also partially to blame as the incident happened in its establishment? Who deserves the greater share of blame, the other customer or the firm? Most interestingly, how does this affect the firm?

Specifically, this research uses the CIT to do the following:

Identify and classify the impacts of service failures generated by other customers

Investigate the emotions experienced by consumers during ocsf

Identify and classify the customer perceptions and behaviors derived from ocsf

Investigate managerial actions taken with regard to ocsf

Investigate the role of attributions in terms of the service failure and the service recovery

From a theoretical perspective, this study builds on service failure theories by investigating perceptions of OCSF and its impacts on consumers’ emotions and behaviors. By investigating the perceptions of failure derived from other consumers and not the firm, this study contributes to attribution theory and provides managerial guidance to practitioners. Using the CIT, a powerful data analysis tool to increase the knowledge of which little is known (Gremler, 2004), this study explores customer perceptions of OCSF, the emotions experienced, consequent customer behaviors, and service recovery actions taken by the firm.

Literature Review

Other Customers in Service Settings

The frequency of customer-to-customer interactions often outnumbers the consumer–provider interactions (Martin & Clark, 1996) especially in hospitality and tourism (Miao et al., 2011) where the presence of other customers is an indispensable part of the experience (Wei, Miao, Cai, & Adler, 2012). Co-creation of service is a rather new idea of research yet its effective use in marketing is at the core of hospitality service, as most hospitality services are designed to encourage customer participation and engagement (Kandampully, Keating, Kim, Mattila, & Solnet, 2014). A key outcome of customer interactions is the way other people are affected by the engaged customer, either directly or indirectly (Libai et al., 2010) which can include negative customer-to-customer experiences (Zhang et al., 2010). Though many firms view the behaviors of other customers as uncontrollable, the management of guests’ behavior is critical (Moore, Moore, & Capella, 2005). In other words, it is important to manage both the customers that directly cause the failure and those who are directly or indirectly affected by the failure. However, few studies investigate OCSF.

Other Customer Service Failure

Customers are co-creators; they not only have an influence on their own experience but also make an impact on the experience of other customers (W. H. Huang, 2008). While it is widely acknowledged that service failure may originate from a wide range of causes, many outside the service organization itself, service recovery is usually portrayed as something the firm does (Nicholls, 2010). What is largely missing from theory is service failures caused by other customers. Other customer failure is said to happen when any action by another customer has a negative impact on one’s service experience (W. H. Huang, 2008). In other words, OCSF is where another customer directly causes a service failure that disrupts the service environment. This study seeks to understand the phenomenon of OCSF and how it affects emotions, attributions, and subsequent behaviors toward the firm.

Emotions Related to Service Failure

Little is known about what service organizations should do to relieve the affected customers’ unpleasant feelings when they suffer from other customer misbehavior (W. H. Huang, 2010). It is important to consider customers’ emotions by recognizing and comprehending that emotions can assist in determining recovery strategies (Petzer, DeMeyer, Svari, & Svensson, 2012). However, much of the research on emotions is either general, focuses on a service receiver’s perceptions of the service providers, or only considers a single set of emotions. This indicates the need for a deeper understanding and examination of emotions experienced in service encounters (Petzer et al., 2012) such as third-party customers’ emotions and how they affect other customers (Tombs & McColl-Kennedy, 2013). Future research should investigate the emotional responses to the behaviors of other customers during the service encounter (Miao & Mattila, 2013) as negative emotions influence both customer perceptions and behaviors (Petzer et al., 2012) and can increase firm costs (Huefner & Hunt, 2000). In addition, recovery actions involving other customer failures are likely to affect customer emotions (Wu et al., 2014). This suggests that service providers cannot simply ignore problem customers and must take a proactive role to prevent service failures. The CIT method can be particularly effective in terms of collecting information related to emotions (Grace, 2007). By examining critical incidents, we can better understand the patterns and nature of emotions, identify underlying structures, and provide theory that can be used to improve service management functions.

Customer Behaviors as a Result of OCSF

Marketers’ interest in customer-to-customer interactions arises from the potential for these interactions to influence the firm’s financial performance and market position. Such research can be important in understanding customer retention and purchasing behavior (Libai et al., 2010) and is extremely important as the cost of retaining an existing customer is less than gaining a new customer (M. H. Huang, 2011). Customers make purchase decisions influenced by the positive or negative response to other customers in the service environment (Tombs & McColl-Kennedy, 2013). This is grounded in the stimulus–organism–response paradigm where the environment arouses emotions that consequently influence behavior responses (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). One study finds that failing to account for perceptions of other customers can overlook as much as 30% of the variance in customers’ intentions to revisit a firm (Brocato et al., 2012). Attribution theory provides important insight into the antecedents and consequences of consumer anger (Funches, 2011). Attributing blame to a firm or an individual leads to different emotional and behavioral results. Based on this gap, this study seeks to explore the behaviors and attributions resulting from OCSF.

Attribution Theory

Attribution theory suggests that customers make judgments about the cause-and-effect relationships that influence subsequent emotions, attitudes, and behaviors (Weiner, 1985). Attribution of blame refers to the assignment of causality for the failure (Choi & Mattila, 2008). Locus of causality reflects the extent to which people believe an event was caused by themselves or another party (Weiner, 1985). Studies including locus of causality are less common (Van Vaerenbergh, Orsingher, Vermeir, & Larivière, 2014) because most service failures originate with the service provider (Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990). This study is unique as it investigates failure that derives from another customer, not the firm. Traditionally, a customer assigns accountability to whomever he or she determines is to blame for the failure (Collie, Sparks, & Bradley, 2000). In this vein, it would be logical that customers would blame the other customer, not the firm. A question of interest to this research involves attribution for the service failure. Do consumers attribute blame to the firm or to the customer? Furthermore, how does this affect their emotional perceptions and behaviors? Research suggests that emotional responses vary depending on how consumers attribute blame (Machleit & Mantel, 2001). If the customer attributes the cause to the firm, more negative emotions and behaviors arise. Therefore, one goal of this research is to determine to whom customers attribute the failure and how this affects their emotions and behaviors.

Service Recovery Expectations

In the context of service failures, consumers ask why there was a failure, whether it will occur again, and who is to be blamed (Funches, 2011). It is critical to consider not only the customers’ attributions regarding the service failure but also the customers’ attributions regarding the recovery process. Although some firms believe that the negative behavior of other customers is uncontrollable, there is always something the firm can do, especially in terms of recovery. Seminal studies using CIT find that customers often refer to employee effort when describing highly satisfying or dissatisfying experiences with a firm (Bitner, 1990). Extending this logic, it is reasonable to expect that a customer’s evaluation of the service will be affected by the other customers’ actions. In addition, employee and management reactions to help solve the problem caused by OCSF will also affect customer evaluations. Service recovery is not simply a process to fix the service, but an opportunity to rebuild the relationship with the customer (Fu, Wu, Huang, Song, & Gong, 2015). This study proposes that with OCSF, while the other customer may cause the failure, it may still be the firm’s responsibility to recover from the failure.

Given these gaps in the research, this study seeks to better understand OCSF. Using CIT, this research investigates emotions, attributions, and behaviors resulting from other consumer service failure. The CIT can provide rich data and is an important starting point for any new area of research (Gremler, 2004), which OCSF is. The study is grounded in attribution theory and examines to whom the customer attributes the failure and also how it affects their recovery and behavioral perceptions.

Method

Critical Incident Technique

This study uses CIT to explore OCSF. Emotions elicited during consumption experiences are believed to leave strong affective traces in episodic memory (Cohen & Areni, 1991). Additionally, CIT can provide an empirical starting point for generating new research evidence about the phenomena of interest (Gremler, 2004). The objective is to gain understanding of the incident from the perspective of the individual, taking into account cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements (Chell, 1998). CIT is a method that is used in many service encounter studies (Reynolds & Harris, 2005; Ro & Wong, 2012) and provides a rich source of data (Gremler, 2004). Therefore, the use of CIT is justified for this study involving OCSF.

In service research, the approach generally asks respondents to tell a story about an experience they have had (Gremler, 2004). The CIT method reflects the normal way service customers think and does not force them into any given framework (Gremler, 2004). CIT relies on a set of procedures to collect, content analyze, and classify observations of human behavior. In the data analysis researchers first determine a general frame of reference to describe the incidents and then the inductive development of main categories and subcategories (Gremler, 2004). The sampling process continues until the data analysis reaches the theoretical saturation point. This occurs when the themes are well developed in terms of properties, dimensions, and variations and further data gathering and analysis adds little new to the conceptualization (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). In addition, CIT can be collected through interviews, written questionnaires, and record form (Butterfield, Borgen, Amundson, & Maglio, 2005; Flanagan, 1954). Many researchers using CIT are now asking participants to reflect on and write down the critical incidents, not just discuss them in a research interview (Zhang et al., 2010). Given the rise of online data collection, many researchers collect critical incidents from online written questionnaires (Funches, 2011; Grace, 2007; Sirianni, Bitner, Brown, & Mandel, 2013). This form of data collection can provide richness and depth to the narrative responses of critical incidents.

Data Collection

The critical incidents for this study were first collected from a national online marketing panel. Marketers have shown increased interest in online data collection techniques as web-based surveys provide more detailed and comprehensive information (Funches, 2011) and many researchers collect critical incidents from online written questionnaires (Funches, 2011; Grace, 2007; Sirianni et al., 2013).

Participants were asked to recall and describe in detail a recent incident where another customer directly caused a service failure that directly affected their experience using a structured questionnaire:

What happened? Describe the entire incident in descriptive detail.

What kind of emotions did you experience? Please describe why you felt those emotions as a result of the experience.

What perceptions did you form toward the company after experiencing that incident? Please explain why you formed those opinions.

After that incident, did you change any of your behaviors? Why did you change (or not change) your behaviors?

What kind of action did the manager or company do to resolve the problem?

What could the firm or managers have done to make the situation better?

Who do you think is responsible for the failure and the recovery? Please explain your answer.

A second series of critical incidents were collected using semistructured in-depth interviews (Bernard, 2011) to illuminate further depth from respondents. Respondents were recruited through an online marketing panel and through an announcement to faculty and students in a state university in the Northeast United States, using recruitment procedures similar to those pioneered by Z. J. Huang and Miao (2013). The questions were identical to the online study. The interviews were collected to triangulate the data collected from the online CIT and provide additional richness in data.

When using CIT it is necessary to let the data drive the theory (Funches, 2011). Therefore, the sample cannot be determined a priori and data collections must continue until the point of theory saturation is reached (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). A critical incident in this study is a specific experience where another customer directly caused a service failure. Incidents that were not service failures from other customers or contained incomplete information were deleted. After careful examination of the completed survey instruments, eight were determined to not meet the above criteria. The interview CITs followed the method of theoretical sampling (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) and each interview was immediately transcribed, coded, and analyzed when completed. Interviews averaged 30 to 40 minutes. The final sample contains 234 critical incidents, 209 from the online collection and 25 from in-depth interviews, the point the responses became repetitive (Bardhi, Eckhardt, & Arnould, 2012; Z. J. Huang & Miao, 2013).

Classification Procedure

Data analysis was followed based on Flanagan (1954) as well as similar research in the related area (Funches, 2011; Ro & Wong, 2012; Zhang et al., 2010). First, each response was read and reread to familiarize the coder with the data. Second, the incident classification scheme was developed to categorize the incidents. Using an iterative process, two researchers read, sorted, and reread the incidents to develop a categorization scheme. Following this, all the critical incidents were categorized by the two independent judges. The intercoder agreement was greater than 93.05%. Interjudge reliabilities greater than 80% are considered satisfactory (Bitner et al., 1990). Next, respondent’s narratives were carefully examined and grouped by the incidents of common themes.

Results

Service Context

Results from the critical incidents find that hospitality and tourism settings, such as restaurants, airplanes, and hotels involved the most frequent forms of OCSF (Table 1).An interesting finding was that although the service context was not dictated by the researcher, the majority of respondents recalled an incident in a hospitality setting.

Table 1

Service Context

Service Context	Critical Incident Technique, Frequency (%)	Interview, Frequency (%)
Restaurant	84 (39.8)	15 (60.0)
Transportation—airplane, bus	39 (18.5)	5 (20.0)
Theatre	33 (15.6)	3 (12.0)
Grocery store/shopping mall	33 (15.6)	1 (4.0)
Hotel	7 (3.3)	1 (4.0)

Type of Incident

Based on the classifications, Table 2 shows that the primary types of incidents include rudeness, loudness, proximity/closeness, children misbehaving, and waiting. Typically, people reported that they could not enjoy the service experience because of other customers talking loudly or being rude in some manner. Respondents noted,

We experienced rude customers who complained until they received compensation and we were neglected as a result.

We stayed in a hotel and the people in the room next door were extremely loud and obnoxious well into the night.

Table 2

Type of Incident

Type of incident	Critical Incident Technique, Frequency (%)	Interview, Frequency (%)
Rudeness incident	72 (23.6)	8 (22.3)
Proximity	63 (20.7)	10 (28.6)
Loudness incident	60 (19.7)	8 (22.3)
Child misbehave	52 (17.0)	7 (20.0)
Waiting for others	35 (11.5)	0 (0.0)

A second important theme that emerged was the influence of proximity in the service environment such as airplanes and restaurants. As such, the social and spatial elements are important to consider and manage as other customers affect one another in the same servicescape. Customers said,

I was at a restaurant for dinner and the tables were all very close to each other and we could hear all the table’s conversations. It got very unconformable and ruined our experience.

After the incident, my family and I moved to another table in order to avoid sitting next to them. We decided to never come back there solely because of the people we sat next to. It’s crazy to think how much other customers can affect your dining experience.

Children misbehaving were also highly rated. For instance, some respondents discussed children who would not stop screaming or running around the service setting. In addition, people were very upset by neglectful parents and noted that they greatly affected their experience:

My family was on vacation and there was a group of kids in the next room being very loud . . . it affected our night’s sleep and our family trip.

Parents verbally punishing a child yet continuing to ignore them as he bothered other tables. Annoying kids and inattentive parents are the worst.

Additionally, some respondents discussed the effect of having to wait longer periods of time as a result of OCSF:

Someone in front of me took forever to cash out. And it always happens when I go here.

Emotion Experiences

Primary emotions felt included anger, frustration, annoyance, and irritation, which are in congruence with those associated with traditional service failures. The results of the emotion classification are found in Table 3.

I felt anger and frustration. Anger towards the parents who refused to control their children and anger towards the restaurant because they didn’t do anything.

I was so annoyed. I just couldn’t understand that they [the other customers] could have such a lack of manners. They were so loud in a public place with no consideration to anyone else. It ruined my whole day.

I was anxious, frustrated and annoyed. One stupid guy ruined what was supposed to be a fun, smooth, relaxing vacation.

Table 3

Emotions Experienced

Emotion	Critical Incident Technique, Frequency (%)	Interview, Frequency (%)
Mad/anger	121 (32.3)	12 (29.3)
Frustration	65 (17.3)	5 (12.2)
Annoyance	64 (17.1)	11 (26.8)
Irritated	41 (10.9)	5 (12.2)
Disturbed	32 (8.5)	1 (2.4)
Nervous/fear	19 (5.1)	1 (2.4)
Sympathetic	17 (4.5)	2 (4.9)
Uncomfortable	16 (4.3)	4 (9.8)

Interestingly, contrary to the common emotions experienced during service failures, a few respondents reported empathy sympathy toward the employees for having to deal with OCSF:

I felt bad for the waitress who was doing her best to accommodate them and to keep other guests happy with full knowledge she probably wouldn’t receive a tip.

At first I was understanding because they were dealing with a kid. I watched them try and do lots of things to get her to be quiet, so I definitely had some sympathy for the staff.

Attributions

While more than 75% of all respondents said the failure was the fault of the other customer, many respondents noted that although they attribute the blame to the other consumer, the firm still has some responsibility:

It seems unfair. It was clearly the customer’s fault, but I also blame the organization.

I think they should take the accountability into the whole situation, because it is their establishment and we are still a guest in that location, so they need to at least acknowledge the situation to everyone.

Perceptions Toward the Company

Table 4 shows that many respondents felt the firm did not appropriately deal with the service failure or acted unprofessionally, and thus developed a negative brand perception toward the company as a direct result of OCSF.

Table 4

Perception Toward the Company

Perception Toward Company	Critical Incident Technique, Frequency (%)	Interview, Frequency (%)
Negative/bad	96 (29.4)	15 (51.7)
Neutral/no changes	66 (20.2)	4 (13.8)
Did not deal with problem	51 (15.6)	0 (0.0)
Unprofessional	38 (11.6)	0 (0.0)
Negative brand perception	24 (7.3)	2 (6.9)
Careless/disrespect	19 (5.8)	4 (13.8)

Such negative perceptions included that the employees were unprofessional, disrespectful, and incompetent. These perceptions then also affected behaviors. Respondents stated,

They were incapable of handling the customer and situation. Totally incompetent.

Did not fully blame the hotel, but definitely associated the name with the negative experience & did they use the ampersand in the response? am less likely to return.

Furthermore, some respondents felt that the company did not handle the service failure appropriately or did nothing to handle it. For example,

I was put out that they never went over to the group of kids to quiet them down. It made it look like they didn’t care about their customer experience; they only cared about the money they make from them.

After experiencing this incident, I felt the company is unprofessional and failed to follow their own policies. I also felt they were unprofessional for not compensating any of the other customers who missed out on the tour they paid for because of this one particular woman.

A very impactful finding was that respondents felt that the actions of the customers present in the service setting were a direct reflection of the firm brand:

I still associate this place with young kids who have nothing better to do and nowhere else to go, and I totally avoid going there at all costs.

My perception of the company being a lower quality company was confirmed, despite the fact that they did not do anything to create the disturbance.

Behaviors as a Result of Other Customer Service Failure

Table 5 shows that while 38.8% of respondents said that they did not change their behavior after the result of the OCSF, many respondents purchased less, never returned, and spread negative word of mouth. For example,

As a result of this incident, my dad canceled our upcoming tours . . . because he lost all respect for this company and chose not to continue doing business with them since they were untrustworthy and failed to compensate their customers.

I was less thrilled to go there as I was worried it would happen again.

I never went back.

Table 5

Behavior from Other Customer Service Failure (OCSF)

Behavior From OCSF	Critical Incident Technique, Frequency (%)	Interview, Frequency (%)
Neutral/no changes	94 (38.8)	5 (17.9)
Not purchasing/purchasing less	51 (21.1)	2 (7.1)
Not returning	37 (15.3)	8 (28.6)
Leaving (early)	22 (9.1)	2 (7.1)
Negative word of mouth	13 (5.4)	6 (21.4)

In extreme cases, respondents said that they would never go back to that location or to any location associated with that brand. This is especially important for the hospitality and tourism industry, specifically restaurants and hotels, as the negative experience from one location can affect all the locations of that brand:

I will never go back to that restaurant again. And not just that specific one, but any one. I now associate it with a terrible experience, terrible customers, and a terrible company.

Actual and Expected Action From the Firm

When we asked what actions were taken by the company during the incident, more than half of the respondents said that no actions were conducted during or after the incidents. Respondents said,

Management did nothing to resolve the problem. I watched as they pretended not to notice.

I would have liked to have seen a manager intervene to help out. I lost brand loyalty because of this incident.

Actions that had taken place include attempting to resolve the problem, apology to other customers, and offering reimbursement (i.e., discount, free meal, and coupon). Table 6 shows the results of actual and expected action from the company.

I was surprised that the manager had very little intervention in the situation. They apologized to the couple that was complaining but not to the rest of the tables, like us, who were negatively affected by the situation.

The bar manager apologized extremely sincerely once she did come over to us, and it was a genuine apology which made me respect and understand the situation even more clearly.

Table 6

Actual and Expected Action From the Firm

Action	Critical Incident Technique, Frequency (%)	Interview, Frequency (%)
No action	113 (53.8)	14 (27.5)
Attempt to resolve the problem	46 (21.9)	20 (39.2)
Apology	17 (8.1)	9 (17.6)
Reimbursement	18 (8.6)	7 (13.7)
Actually resolved problem	11 (5.2)	1 (7.8)

In terms of the expected action from the company, respondents mentioned that the company should have actively tried to control other customers’ misbehavior regardless of the results. A few of the people expected sincere apology, reimbursement, and more attentive attitude to the situation from the company. Respondents poignantly noted that

Even though I knew it wasn’t their (the company’s) fault I still blamed them.

Responsibility for Service Recovery

One of the most fascinating results from the study is that while more than 77.5% of the respondents noted that the failure was the responsibility of the customer, 93.2% said that the company or the service provider was responsible to recover. Results are shown in Table 7.

As a result of this situation, the company did absolutely nothing to compensate their customers in any way possible stating that it was something that was entirely out of their control.

The other customer was at fault for sure, and that’s a shame, but it’s the truth and unfortunately will affect my decision on who to fly with in the future.

Table 7

Responsibility for Failure Versus Recovery

	Critical Incident Technique		Interview
	Failure, Frequency (%)	Recovery, Frequency (%)	Failure, Frequency (%)	Recovery, Frequency (%)
Customer	162 (77.5)	4 (2.5)	22 (75.9)	1 (3.4)
Company/management	38 (18.2)	138 (85.2)	5 (17.2)	20 (68.9)
Service provider	6 (2.9)	13 (8.0)	2 (6.9)	8 (27.6)

In cases where the company did have a successful recovery, the customers associated positive perceptions and actions. For example,

They gave us our meal for free and apologized repeatedly for the problem . . . even though it wasn’t their fault! Because of how they took care of us I always go back.

I didn’t really change any behaviors because the restaurant handled the situation perfectly. They could have ignored it but instead they came around and talked to each table.

Managerial and Theoretical Implications

Results from this study find both important managerial and theoretical implications for service failure in the hospitality and tourism industry. Customers engage in interactions with other customers regularly in hospitality environments. The results of this study reveal interesting themes and variables that are not often found in the literature and may be useful in building new theories and energizing fresh thinking in services and hospitality marketing. Type of incidents, emotions, perceptions, behaviors, and attributions can all play a role in theory building and improving managerial delivery in the service environment especially in terms of investigating other customers.

First, this study contributes to the literature as it is the first study to examine OCSF in the hospitality and tourism literature. There is a lack of research on customer-to-customer interactions (W. H. Huang & Wang, 2014) especially as it is related to service failure. The idea that poor behavior of other customers negatively affects the focal customer may not be new, but there is a lack of empirical research that specifically identifies how this affects firms (in terms of emotions and consequent customer behaviors) and why it affects firms (by incorporating attribution theory). From a managerial perspective, the results of this study support the notion that even when they do not directly interact, customers affect one another in service settings.

Second, very few studies investigate OCSF and this study contributes to the literature by being one of the first to identify the types of incidents, including rudeness, children misbehaving, proximity, and time. The research provides important implications to hospitality managers as it suggests that they need to account for the impact of other customers when developing their service strategies (Brocato et al., 2012). More specifically, the effect of proximity may be important to service design where individuals are closely seated such as transportation or restaurants. As such, managers should focus on avoiding negative customer-to-customer interactions by carefully considering seating arrangements (Zhang et al., 2010). Strictly following a rotational order for seating may not be the best strategy.

Third, this research finds that emotions are vitally important when examining OCSF especially anger, frustration, annoyance, and sympathy. This research contributes methodologically by using CIT as few studies in the hospitality literature use CIT to examine customer emotions. Anger experienced is in congruence with previous studies. Conversely, marketing theorists rarely examine frustration in the literature (Gelbrich, 2010) making the results of this research more impactful from a theoretical standpoint. Another interesting finding is that a number of respondents claimed that they had sympathy toward the service provider. These results are interesting as there is a dearth of literature that examines sympathy and service failure. Practitioners should seek to train employees and managers on reading and reacting to customer emotions derived from OCSF.

The fourth highly interesting finding from this study is related to perceptions of attributions. Attribution theory states that people interpret behavior in terms of its causes and that these interpretations play an important role in determining reactions to the behavior (Kelley & Michela, 1980). It would then be logical that customers who acknowledge the other customer as the cause of the failure would develop negative reactions toward the other customer, not the firm. As such, it is critical that managers do not simply ignore the effects of other customers, but manage them properly. Of particular interest may be the controllability attribution; they believe that an event could have been prevented. Therefore, a major contribution of this study is that OCSF is still the service provider’s responsibility.

Fifth, this research suggests that hospitality firms need to recognize OCSF and develop protocols for dealing with all customers involved. Service recovery should be initiated as a proactive marketing strategy rather than a reactive service management approach (Fu et al., 2015). Training employees how to react to disruptive other-customer situations with appropriate problem-solving skills is key (W. H. Huang, 2010). When undesirable customer-to-customer interactions occur, frontline employees need to know when and how to intervene (Miao et al., 2011). More specifically, results from this research find that in many incidents, employees and management did nothing to address this situation. Such recovery may first involve addressing and curtailing the issue with the misbehaving customer. Additionally, in terms of recovery firms may seek to not only confront the misbehaving customer but also communicate with the other customers affected. While compensation can relieve some of the negative feelings, other forms of recovery such as an apology may be equally as effective. Practitioners should seek to address not only the problem customer but also the emotions and impacts from the other customers affected.

Limitations and Future Research

The findings of this study reveal important services marketing and hospitality management issues such as service failure recovery, attributions, and the effects of other customers in a service setting using CIT. However, future studies should focus on examining management strategies for dealing with OCSF by using other methods such as survey and experimental design. While one purpose of this study was not to specify the service context, future research may seek to examine in greater depth specific service or hospitality contexts to derive more industry-specific findings. Additionally, the perspective of employees may offer additional insights. Of note, it would be interesting to investigate the interacting roles of customers, other customers, employees, and management.

This research finds that service failure literature and theory should also include failures caused by other customers and researchers should investigate the effects of other customer-generated service failures in terms of attributions, emotions, and recovery scenarios. More research should investigate the underlying dimensions of attributions: stability, controllability, and locus of causality as they relate to other customer-generated service failure. Of particular interest may be the controllability dimension of attribution where the customer believes that the event could have been prevented. Future research should investigate managerial responses toward the other customer or manager proactiveness in the service environment.

Conclusion

Customers are regularly affected by the actions of others during the service exchange, yet little research has investigated this phenomenon. More specifically, no research to date investigates the influence of other customer-generated service failure on consumer perceptions and behaviors. Results find that even though customers acknowledge that the failure is the fault of the customers, there are still negative consequences for the firm. Many customers experience negative emotions such as anger and frustration and feel that the actions of the other customers reflect the brand image of the firm visited. Additionally, while customers attribute the failure to other customers, they purchase less and create negative word of mouth. Finally, attributions play an important role in perceptions and behaviors. Although the firm may not be responsible for other customer-generated service failure, they are responsible for the recovery. How the firm recovers from OCSF is critical in whether customers form positive or negative perceptions toward the firm.

Footnotes

Melissa A. Baker, PhD (e-mail: mbaker@isenberg.umass.edu), is an assistant professor in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts. Kawon Kim (e-mail: kkim01@mailbox.sc.edu) is an assistant professor in the School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Management at the University of South Carolina.

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