What happens when things go wrong? Retail sales explanations and their effects

Not all marketplace interactions are initially successful, and often customer expectations are not met, resulting in dissatisfaction, which leads to complaint and redress-seeking behavior. In this process, the nature of the explanations and other aspects of the firm–customer interaction are critical. This study investigates the proposition that explanation adequacy plays a critical role in the resolution of unsatisfactory sales encounters. Data were collected from a sample of consumers and analyzed with the use of structural-equation modeling. The findings indicate that explanation adequacy is influenced by the style and content of the explanation and the timeliness of an organization's reaction. However, explanation adequacy appears to only influence the final perceptions (indirectly) of the severity of the incident and emotional reaction to it, and the perceptions of the extent of the justice of the resolution and the assignment of blame to external factors were found to be intervening variables. The results also indicated that the assignment of blame to internal factors was unrelated to the adequacy of an explanation, but did influence emotional reactions and the perceived severity of the incident. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

[1]  James C. Anderson,et al.  The Effects of Sampling Error and Model Characteristics on Parameter Estimation for Maximum Likelihood Confirmatory Factor Analysis. , 1985, Multivariate behavioral research.

[2]  B. Tabachnick,et al.  Using Multivariate Statistics , 1983 .

[3]  E. H. Creyer,et al.  Who's to blame? Counterfactual reasoning and the assignment of blame , 1997 .

[4]  R. Bies,et al.  The predicament of injustice: The management of moral outrage. , 1987 .

[5]  Kenneth A. Bollen,et al.  Structural Equations with Latent Variables , 1989 .

[6]  F. Fincham,et al.  Social categorization and personal similarity as determinants of attribution bias: A test of defensive attribution , 1982 .

[7]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .

[8]  Paul T. P. Wong,et al.  When people ask "why" questions, and the heuristics of attributional search. , 1981 .

[9]  Alan R. Andreasen,et al.  Consumer Response to Unsatisfactory Purchases: A Survey of Perceiving Defects, Voicing Complaints, and Obtaining Redress , 1977 .

[10]  Joseph F. Hair,et al.  An Assessment of the Mall Intercept as a Data Collection Method , 1985 .

[11]  Debra L. Shapiro,et al.  Explanations: What Factors Enhance Their Perceived Adequacy , 1994 .

[12]  Debra L. Shapiro,et al.  Interactional fairness judgments: The influence of causal accounts , 1987 .

[13]  Caryl E. Rusbult,et al.  Impact of couple patterns of problem solving on distress and nondistress in dating relationships. , 1986 .

[14]  Jagdip Singh,et al.  Determinants of Consumers’ Decisions to Seek Third Party Redress: An Empirical Study of Dissatisfied Patients , 1989 .

[15]  E. E. Jones.  Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior , 1987 .

[16]  P. Bentler,et al.  Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis : Conventional criteria versus new alternatives , 1999 .

[17]  Claire P. Bolfing.  How do Customers Express Dissatisfaction and What can Service Marketers do About it , 1989 .

[18]  Donald E. Conlon,et al.  Customer Perceptions of Corporate Responses to Product Complaints: The Role of Explanations , 1996 .

[19]  Rex B. Kline,et al.  Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling , 1998 .

[20]  B. Weiner,et al.  An attributional analysis of excuse giving: studies of a naive theory of emotion. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[21]  Larry L. Cummings,et al.  Causal Accounts and Managing Organizational Conflict , 1988 .

[22]  Robin A. Coulter,et al.  The long good-bye: The dissolution of customer-service provider relationships , 2000 .

[23]  F. Fincham.  Moral judgment and the development of causal schemes , 1982 .

[24]  Mitigating circumstance information, censure, and aggression. , 1986 .

[25]  C. Fornell.  A National Customer Satisfaction Barometer: The Swedish Experience: , 1992 .

[26]  R. P. McDonald,et al.  Goodness-of-fit indexes in confirmatory factor analysis : The effect of sample size , 1988 .

[27]  Marsha L. Richins.  A Multivariate Analysis of Responses to Dissatisfaction , 1987 .

[28]  Ruth N. Bolton,et al.  A Model of Customer Satisfaction with Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery , 1999 .

[29]  R. East,et al.  Complaining as planned behavior , 2000 .

[30]  Gilbert A. Churchill,et al.  An Investigation into the Determinants of Customer Satisfaction , 1982 .