Consequences of Customer Co-Production in Reactive and Proactive Service Recovery
Final Report Abstract
Research scrutinizing customers’ contributions to service recovery should differ between two forms of customer participation in service recovery, i.e., (1) “co-production in service recovery (CoProSR)” if the recovery outcome is generic and not altered by customers’ contributions to the service recovery and (2) “co-creation in service recovery” when the outcome is altered through customer’s contributions. This project focused on the former concept (i.e., CoProSR) and reveals unwanted effects of higher CoProSR on both non-monetary and monetary post-recovery evaluations. These insights advance prior knowledge in this field which majorly investigates co-creation in service recovery and predominantly identifies positive effects on customers’ post-recovery evaluations. With the help of a qualitative study, this project additionally identifies potential personal (e.g., domain-specific expertise) and situational moderators (e.g., responsibility for a third-party) that may influence the relationship between customer participation in service recovery and post-recovery evaluations by impacting customers’ willingness to participate in service recovery. Furthermore, this project reveals that the unwanted effects of higher CoProSR on post-recovery evaluations emerge for different types of customer inputs, varying from contributing time, information and/or activities to the service recovery. Thus, in two experimental series (1a and 1b), the degree of CoProSR was manipulated, on the one hand, as the amount of information and activities (series 1a) and, on the other hand, as the time (i.e. "recovery time"; series 1b) that the customer contributes to service recovery. Both experimental series indicate unwanted effects with respect to post-recovery evaluations. Experimental series 1a shows that more CoProSR leads to negative effects on post-recovery evaluations such as satisfaction and WOM after service recovery. In contrast, the influence of "recovery time" on compensation expectations (series 1b) is nonlinear and forms a zone of tolerance in which the customer's compensation expectations do not increase initially. Several moderators influence these underlying effects. For example, the negative effect of CoProSR on non-monetary post-recovery evaluations is more pronounced for customers with higher domain-specific expertise (series 1a), whereas proactive communication initiatives (e.g., status updates, explanations) can mitigate the increase in compensation expectations over time (series 1b). In contrast, the moderating influence of proactivity in service recovery on post-recovery evaluations could not be clearly confirmed in experimental series 2a for situations in which the customer co-produces by contributing information and activities. Contrary to initial expectations, a moderating effect of proactivity in service recovery was only found here for monetary post-recovery evaluations. As this effect could not be replicated so far, it was decided not to pursue proactivity as a moderator in the context of CoProSR for the time being. Instead, and inspired by the results of the qualitative study, experimental series 2b considered failure type (i.e., individual versus group failure) as a situational moderator. Results from this study are pending, but initial analyses suggest that the negative effect of CoProSR on non-monetary evaluations is meaningful for both individual and group failures. The project carved out at least four surprising and / or innovative results: (1) In contrast to the initial assumptions of this project, the meaning of proactivity in service recovery as a moderator of the link between Co- ProSR and post-recovery evaluations is ambiguous when CoProSR is manipulated by information and activity provision. One study does find a moderation effect at least for a monetary outcome, but these results have not been replicated, yet. When CoProSR is considered as recovery time, proactive communication initiatives appeared to have an impact, though. Considering the results of the qualitative study, future studies should scrutinize the effects of proactivity for service recovery processes without a generic/stable outcome. (2) The project suggests differences for the link of CoProSR on post-recovery evaluations depending on the kind of input (here: recovery time versus information/activities). Thus, recovery time depicts a nonlinear effect. Future studies may want to investigate such nonlinear effects for CoProSR in terms of information and activities as well. (3) The project identifies customer compensation expectations as a meaningful outcome variable. Future studies should seek to understand further determinants of this outcome. (4) This project also gave rise to an innovative project which examined the effect of observing CoProSR and the service recovery on a social media platform like facebook on third parties (i.e. virtually present others) and highlights the meaning of recovery transparency. Companies and especially service providers can benefit from the project results by creating more effective service recovery processes. In particular, the results alert managers to the notion that customer participation may not lead to positive post-recovery evaluations in every recovery situation – if the recovery outcome is not altered by customers’ contributions (i.e., CoProSR), it may have unwanted effects on customers evaluations. Some results of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science article were considered in media.
Publications
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(2016), “Thank You for Your Helping Hand! Ways to Avoid Negative Consequences of Customer Participation in Recovery of Technology Product Failure”, NA – Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 44, eds. Page Moreau and Stefano Puntoni, Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, 65-69.
Bilstein, Nicola, Shashi M. Matta and Jens Hogreve
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(2016), “The Meaning of Situational Factors for Customer Participation in Service Recovery – A Qualitative Analysis,” Conference Proceedings SERVSIG 2016, Maastricht, 884-885
Bilstein, Nicola
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(2017), “Unveiling the Recovery Time Zone of Tolerance: When Time Matters in Service Recovery,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(6), 866-883
Hogreve, Jens, Nicola Bilstein and Leonhard Mandl
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(2018), “The Moderating Effect of Customers’ Willingness to Participate in Service Recovery and its Impacting Factors - An Empirical Analysis,” Journal of Service Management Research, 2(3), 17-29
Bilstein, Nicola
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(2019), “Initiate it – Proactivity as a Means to Overcome Unwanted Effects of Customer Participation in Service Recovery?” Proceedings of the 48th European Marketing Academy (EMAC) Conference, 9170
Bilstein, Nicola and Jens Hogreve
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(2019), “Service Recovery on Stage: Effects of Social Media Recovery on Virtually Present Others,” Journal of Service Research, 22 (4), 421-439
Hogreve, Jens, Nicola Bilstein and Kathrin Hoerner
