Torsten Ringberg, Gaby Odekerken-Schröder, & Glenn L. Christensen
Executive Summary
Flights are cancelled. Food is overcooked. Baggage is lost. Insurance payments are delayed. Drinks are spilled. Tires explode. Products fail. Salespeople are rude. Waiters are slow. Each of these consumer experiences represents a goods or service failure. Most providers do not respond in a satisfactory manner to such breaches, and this has consequences for customer satisfaction and retention. The authors argue that the inability by providers to heed consumers' recovery preferences is largely due to generic response measures by companies. They illustrate that consumer recovery preferences can largely be captured by three types of internalized cultural models that consumers rely on: relational, oppositional, and utilitarian. These models structure consumers' orientation toward high-involvement (self-relevant) interactions with providers and subsequent recovery preferences when experiencing a breach.
Consumers with a relational cultural model express a strong desire to maintain emotional ties with providers. Thus, a goods/service breach is likened to a rupture to the emotional bond, leading to a state of uneasiness that is comparable in intensity to the anxiety people experience during separation. Thus, such failure evokes highly affect-laden self-relevant sentiments, such as estrangement, betrayal, and feelings of being slighted. The anxiety focuses not on the breach but on the potential breakdown in the relational interaction with the provider. These consumers prefer to reestablish their relationship with the provider. Thus, it is essential that the recovery process centers not on impersonal restitution or goods replacement, per se, but rather on reestablishing an emotional bond with the consumer.
In contrast, consumers with an oppositional cultural model believe that marketers would not hesitate to take advantage of, coerce, and control them, given the opportunity. This perception becomes particularly evident during a self-relevant goods or service failure. These consumers believe that companies must be monitored and that any transgression must be closely scrutinized. Loyalty comes with a short leash, and little interest exists in interacting with a provider until the consumer regains a sense of control. These consumers neither consider nor accept the anthropomorphized view that "to err is human." Thus, it is essential that the recovery process centers on providing the consumer with a sense of control. This can be accomplished by providing options among which they can choose.
The last group of consumers relies on a utilitarian cultural model. These consumers embrace the classical ideal of rationality, mental accounting, and resource exchange. Their interaction with providers is based on future benefits of this interaction weighed against the cost of discontinuing the relationship (a breach becomes part of this consideration set). These consumers neither view self-relevant goods/service failures as a personal attack (as relational consumers) nor perceive them as being indicative of providers' antagonism (as oppositional consumer). Rather, failures are regarded as financial and time-related inconveniences. Thus, in general, the success of a recovery situation to these informants depends on providers' ability to offer an expedient compensation equal to the inconvenience measure in time, effort, and money.
Finally, the authors discuss adaptive recovery diagnostics and the type of training of frontline personnel that will enable providers to respond adequately to each of the three dominant consumer recovery preferences.
Biography
Torsten Ringberg (PhD, Penn State University) is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He was visiting assistant professor in 2005–2006 at Vanderbilt University His main research interests focus on identifying the influence of mental and cultural models on perception (among consumers and managers). This focus informs his research in communication, services marketing, business-to-business loyalty, and knowledge transfer in organizations. He has done extensive qualitative-based consulting for Olson/Zaltman, the U.S. Marines, and large U.S. and European companies. He won the American Marketing Association (Milwaukee) 2004 Award (with bvk and Milwaukee Electric Tools) for best and most innovative consulting project. He is an ad hoc reviewer for Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Psychology & Marketing. His research is published in Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Journal of Retailing, and Industrial Marketing, as well as in Association for Consumer Research publications. Additional research is under review in leading U.S. and European academic journals.
Gaby Odekerken-Schröder (PhD, Maastricht University, the Netherlands) is an Associate Professor in Marketing at Maastricht University. Her main research interests are related to the domains of relationship marketing, services marketing, customer (e-)loyalty, and consumer behavior. She is member of the editorial board of the Journal of Relationship Marketing and an ad hoc reviewer for the International Journal of Service Industry Management. Her research has been published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Consumer Marketing, and many other international journals.
Glenn L. Christensen (PhD, Penn State University) is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. His main research area focuses on the internal mental life of consumers and its varied manifestations across the multifaceted experiences of consumption. His has won several awards for his teaching and scholarship, including the 2000 Nicosia Award for best competitive paper at the Association for Consumer Research Conference. His research has appeared in Advances in Business Management and Forecasting, Psychology and Marketing, Advances in Consumer Research, European Advances in Consumer Research, and other outlets. He has also served as an ad hoc reviewer for several journals, including Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Psychology & Marketing.
Journal of Marketing, Vol. 71, No. 3, July 2007
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