1. Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: A Practical Manual
Erdogan Koc

2. Chapter 6 Customer Attribution in Service Failures and Recovery

3. Learning Outcomes
Understand the underlying reasons why people make causal attributions.
Understand the basic tenets of attribution theory.
Understand and explain the causal dimensions of customer attribution.
Understand and explain the role and influence of customer participation on customer service failure perceptions and attribution.
Identify the factors influencing customer attribution: severity of failures, customer participation, cultural factors, online and off-line service failures.
Discuss the outcomes of service failure and customer attribution.

4. Attribution Theory
Attribution refers to the effect of ascribing a particular source or cause (Jolibert & Peterson, 1976).
When customers interpret the causes of service failures, these are recognized as attribution (Priluck & Wisenblit, 2009).
Attribution theory was originally introduced by Fritz Heider (1958) with a book entitled Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (Weiner, 2000).

5. Antecedents of causal inferences (Kelley & Michela, 1980)
Information
Motivation

6. Attribution Causal Dimensions
Stability
Locus of causality
Controllability

7. Attribution Causal Dimensions
Stability refers to whether the perceived cause of failure is attributed to the degree of permanence in time (likelihood of recurrence), i.e. whether it is temporary (fluctuates over time) or permanent (stable over time).

8. Attribution Causal Dimensions
Locus of causality refers to whether cause of failure is located in the customer himself or his decisions (internal attribution), or located in a company which offers services (external attribution), or located in unexpected environmental effects (situational attribution).
Controllability is the degree of subject alteration and when the outcome could have been different.

9. Factors Affecting Customer Attribution in Response to Service Failure
Severity of failures
Customer participation
Online and off-line service failure
Cultural factors

10. Severity of Failures
Severity of failures relates to the responsibility attribution (locus) as well as appropriateness of compensation for satisfaction of service recovery.

11. Severity of Failures Less severe failure Highly severe failure
Restaurant responsible
Customer responsible
Customer responsible
Moderate involvement
Gift
Discount
Credit
Refund
High involvement
Table 1.1: Appropriateness of different types of tangible compensation
Adopted from: Bambauer-Sachse & Rabeson, 2015

12. Customer Participation
Customers who participate in the service are more likely to care less about the negative outcomes of a service failure (Koc et al., 2017).
When customers participate in service, they evaluate the attributions differently on the three attribution dimensions; they tend not to make external attributions blaming the service providers.

13. Customer Participation
Customer citizenship behaviour (CCB) is the extra-role behaviour which is extended to customers who participate in service delivery (Groth, 2005).
Extra-role behaviour is the time and effort (support or assistance) contributed by customers beyond their required rules in service delivery.
There are three dimensions of CCB, including:
provision of feedback to organizations
help offered to other customers and
recommendations of business to others (Groth, 2005).

14. Online and Offline Service Failure
Online services involve customer participation in the service processes.
Online customers are more likely to blame themselves for service failures; they are more willing to recover for themselves, in which case companies might save some costs (Harris et al., 2006).

15. Cultural Factors
Culture, in fact, has become one of the significant factors affecting customer attribution.
Culture has a substantial influence on the perception of quality, perceived equity as well as problem attribution (Chang, 2008).

16. Outcomes of Service Failure and Customer Attribution
Service recovery actions
Customer emotions and behavioural intentions
Perceived quality and customer satisfaction

17. Service Recovery Actions
Customers tend to be more tolerant if the service or product failures are customer-related; they think of themselves as less deserving of any refunds or apologies compared to company-related failures (Folkes, 1984).
If the failure incidents happen due to unstable causes which are beyond the control of companies, customers are more willing to accept an exchange than if it was due to a stable cause (Folkes, 1984).

18. Customer Emotions and Behavioural Intentions
Depending on customer attributions, customers tend to respond differently in terms of their emotions and behavioural outcomes, such as repurchase intention and negative WOM (Harrison-Walker, 2012).

19. Customer Emotions and Behavioural Intentions
Attribution
Success
Failure
Ability
Confidence
Competence
Incompetence
Effort
Relaxation
Guilt (shame)
Others
Gratitude
Anger
Luck
Surprise
Table 1.2 Relations between causal attributions and feelings.
Source: Adapted from Weiner (1980)

20. Customer Emotions and Behavioral Intentions
Locus of Causality
Success
Failure
Internal
Pride
Confidence
Competence
Satisfaction
Guilt
External
Grateful
Thankful
Anger
Surprise
Table 1.3 Relations between locus of causality and feelings.
Source: Adapted from Weiner (1980)

21. Customer Emotions and Behavioral Intentions
Customer-Attributed Responsibilities
Evaluation of Service Experiences
Service employee
What is delivered (outcome quality)
Management/manager
How the service is delivered (process quality)
Service employee and manager (equally)
Physical environment (servicescape quality)
Table 1.4: Relations between customer attributed responsibilities and evaluation of service experiences.
Source: Swanson & Davis, 2003

22. Perceived Quality and Customer Satisfaction
Service attribution has an impact on customer-perceived service quality (Chebat et al., 1995; Iglesias, 2009).
The role of employee-customer interactions could reduce the effects of customer attributions during service failures on customer satisfaction (Anderson et al., 2009).

23. Perceived Quality and Customer Satisfaction
Attribution also demonstrates direct effects on satisfaction (Iglesias, 2009).
Satisfaction level is low when the failure is related to employee attitude, whereas failures that are beyond the company's control are perceived as less severe than failures caused by internal factors.

24. There are two antecedents for causal inferences:
Summary
Attribution refers to the effect of ascribing a particular source or cause (Jolibert & Peterson, 1976).
There are two antecedents for causal inferences:
Information
Motivation
(Kelley & Michela, 1980)

25. Attribution causal dimensions:
Summary
Attribution causal dimensions:
stability,
locus of causality, and
controllability

26. Factors affecting service failure and customer attribution:
Summary
Factors affecting service failure and customer attribution:
Severity of failures
Customer participation
Online and off-line service failures
Cultural factors

27. Outcomes of service failure and customer attribution:
Summary
Outcomes of service failure and customer attribution:
Service recovery actions
Customer emotions and behavioural intentions
Perceived quality and customer satisfaction