Inter-customer helping during service failures: The mediating role of disappointment | Journal of Service Science Research Skip to main content
Log in

Inter-customer helping during service failures: The mediating role of disappointment

  • Research Papers
  • Published:
Journal of Service Science Research

Abstract

Customers give and receive help from others during service encounters, which is called intercustomer helping. Inter-customer helping is a form of customer-to-customer interactions (CCI). CCIs are more common in the current economy where more customers deliver services on their own, without involvement of service workers through self-service technologies, and therefore, it is critical to understand CCI. However, there have been only limited efforts to understand interactions between customers, and more emphasis was on understanding the interactions between employees and customers. Thus, the current research fills this gap through investigating the effect of receiving help from another customer (vs. no help) on customer satisfaction during service failures. In particular, the current research suggests that receiving inter-customer helping (vs. receiving no help) would increase customer satisfaction through mitigating disappointment.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Japan)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Black HG, Vincent LH, & Skinner SJ (2014) Customers helping customers: payoffs for linking customer. Journal of Services Marketing 28(5):391–401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonifield C & Cole C (2007) Affective responses to service failure: anger, regret, and retaliatory versus conciliatory responses. Marketing Letters 18:85–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DeScioli P & Krishna S (2013) Giving to whom? Altruism in different types of relationship. Journal of Economic Psychology 34:218–228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dong B, Evans KR & Zou S (2008) The effects of customer participation in co-created service recovery Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 36(1):123–137.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gruen TW, Osmonbekov T & Czaplewski AJ (2007) Customer-to-customer exchange: Its MOA antecedents and its impact on value creation and loyalty. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 35(4):537–549.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hart CW, Heskett J & Sasser WE (1990) The Profitable Art of Service Recovery. Harvard Business Review 68(August):148–156.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayes AF (2012) PROCESS: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling. http://www.afhayes.com/public/process 2012.pdf. Accessed 2016-01-10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Helgeson VS (2003) Social support and quality of life. Quality of Life Research 12(1):25–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kahn RL (1994) Social support: Content, causes, and consequences. In R.P. Abeles (Ed.), Aging and quality of life, New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicholls R (2010) New directions for customer-to-customer interaction research. Journal of Services Marketing 24(1):87–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenbaum MS & Massiah CA (2007) When customers receive support from other customers: exploring the influence of intercustomer social support on customer voluntary performance. Journal of Service Research 9(3):257–270.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith AK & Bolton RN (2002) The effect of customers’ emotional responses to service failures on their recovery effort evaluations and satisfaction judgments. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 30(1):5–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tax SS, Brown SW, & Chandrashekaran M (1998) Customer evaluations of service complaint experiences: implications for relationship marketing. Journal of Marketing 62(2):60–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Viswesvaran C, Sanchez JI, & Fisher J (1999) The role of social support in the process of work stress: A meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior 54(2):314–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yi Y & Gong T (2008) The effects of customer justice perception and affect on customer citizenship behavior and customer dysfunctional behavior, Industrial Marketing Management 37(7):767–783.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yi Y & Kim SY (2017) The role of other customers during self-service failure. Service Business, published online first: DOI:10.1007/s11628-016-0325-2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeelenberg M & Pieters R (2004) Beyond valence in customer dissatisfaction: a review and new findings on behavioral responses to regret and disappointment in failed services. Journal of Business Research 57(4):445–455.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeelenberg M, van Dijk WW, van der Plight J, Manstead ASR, van Empelen P, & Reinderman DR (1998) Emotional reactions to the outcomes of decisions: The role of counterfactual thought in the experience of regret and disappointment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process 75(2):117–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeelenberg M, van Dijk WW, Manstead ASR, & van der Plight J (2000) On bad decisions and disconfirmed expectancies: the psychology of regret and disappointment. Cognition and Emotion 14(4):521–541.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeithaml VA & Bitner MJ (2003) Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm. McGraw-Hill Irwin, Boston, MA.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Seo Young Kim.

Additional information

Seo Young Kim is a Ph.D in Marketing at Seoul National University. She also holds a Master’s degree in Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, and a Bachelor's degree in Economics at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Her research interests include areas such as services marketing, customer helping behavior and consumer behavior.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kim, S.Y. Inter-customer helping during service failures: The mediating role of disappointment. J Serv Sci Res 9, 61–71 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12927-017-0004-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12927-017-0004-4

Keywords

Navigation