A good telling-off! A study of customer reprimand strategies

Abstract

Purpose Customer misbehavior can severely impact on bystanders’ evaluations, emotions, and behaviors. We examine the impact of organizational responses to customer misbehavior on bystanding customers. We study the effects of reprimand courtesy, personalization, and motive statements on bystanding customer emotions, deontic justice perceptions, avoidance desires, and prosocial behavioral intentions. Design/methodology/approach We conduct four scenario-based experiments in airlines and restaurants to gauge the effect of organizational responses to customer-instigated failures on bystanding customers. We utilize confirmatory factor analyses to assess the reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity of the perceptual measures, and utilize PROCESS analysis to construct serial mediation, parallel mediation, and moderation models to test our hypotheses. Findings Study 1 indicates that polite and less polite reprimands of transgressors and general announcements reduce bystanding customers’ avoidance desires. However, reprimands and general announcements do not appear to raise prosocial behavioral intentions. Studies 2 and 3 extend the focal relationships in Study 1 to a different context. Study 4 indicates that customers’ blame of the firm moderates the outcomes of motive statements within general announcements. Research Implications Our study indicates that tactics to reduce customers’ avoidance desires do not encourage customers’ pro-social behavioral intentions. Practical Implications Firm representatives should utilize statements of less selfish firm motives when customers attribute more blame to the firm. Originality We provide a deontic justice and attribution based explanation of how customer reprimands impact on bystanding customers. Moreover, we highlight how recovery strategies should reflect interactions between recovery tactics and attributions, and the trade-offs between recovery outcomes.