Don’t try harder: using customer inoculation to build resistance against service failures
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Mikolon, S
Quaiser, B
Wieseke, J
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Capitalizing on a large-scale field experimental dataset involving 1,254 airline customers, this study introduces customer inoculation as a new, proactive strategy for mitigating the negative consequences that service failures have on customer satisfaction. Results confirm that customer inoculation eases the decrease in satisfaction when customers experience a service failure. Additional analyses indicate that customer inoculation does not harm customer satisfaction if no service failure occurs. This finding sets inoculation apart from expectation management and underscores the potential inoculation has for marketing practice. Furthermore, contrary to traditional recovery strategies for addressing service failures, customer inoculation operates in advance of a service failure and thereby circumvents potential drawbacks of traditional strategies. In sum, customer inoculation represents a novel strategy for addressing service failures with respect to existing marketing literature and expands the scope of action for companies when they cannot avoid offering occasionally flawed services.
Date Issued
2014-08-13
Date Acceptance
2014-07-03
Citation
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2014, 43 (4), pp.512-527
ISSN
1552-7824
Publisher
Springer
Start Page
512
End Page
527
Journal / Book Title
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
Volume
43
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2014, Academy of Marketing Science. The final publication is available at Springer via https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-014-0398-1
Publication Status
Published