The Devil You Know: Service Failures, Self-Esteem, and Behavioral Loyalty

Abstract

We investigate one of the factors that might explain behavioral loyalty in face of service failures. Research suggests that individuals with low self-esteem who experience relational transgressions develop an avoidant attachment style, which impairs their interpersonal functioning and their willingness to take further interpersonal risks (Park and Maner 2009), and in particular to engage in other long-term relationships (Walker 2009). Drawing on this research, we propose that low self-esteem (LSE) consumers who experience service failures become unwilling to commit themselves to alternative brands, even when they have the opportunity to do so, thus—paradoxically—they remain trapped in their current brand relationship. High self-esteem (HSE) consumers, instead, are more likely to switch to other available service providers when they experience service failures, as compared to when they do not experience failures. We also predict that LSE consumers who experience service failures tend to avoid new commitments in general, thus favoring transactions relative to long-term contracts, even in consumption domains that are unrelated to the service failure. In study 1a, participants completed a measure of self-esteem (Rosenberg 1989) and reported the quality of their internet connection. Finally, participants indicated how likely they would be to switch to a competitor of their current Internet provider. As the quality of their internet connection decreased, HSE consumers were more likely to switch. However, frequency of failures did not have an effect on LSE consumers’ likelihood to switch. In study 1b, we replicated these findings in an experimental setting: HSE consumers who imagined to use an extremely faulty Internet connection were more likely to switch to an available provider as compared to their counterparts who imagined to use a perfectly functioning Internet connection; LSE consumers did not express different switching intentions between conditions. Since we had hypothesized that the loyalty of LSE consumers in face of service failures is driven by their avoidance of new long-term relationships, in study 2 we manipulated the length of the contract offered by an alternative Internet service provider. When an alternative service provider offered a long-term contract (1 year), HSE consumers were more likely to switch to this alternative service provider as the quality of their internet connection worsened, but LSE consumers were not. Instead, when an alternative service provider offered a short-term contract (1 month, renewable), LSE consumers were as likely as HSE consumers to switch to this provider. In study 3, we demonstrate that the fear of new commitments induced by service failures extends to unrelated domains. LSE consumers who imagined to use an extremely faulty Internet connection expressed a greater preference for buying a magazine at the newsstand relative to subscribing to this magazine, as compared to their counterparts who imagined to use a perfectly functioning Internet connection and participants in a negative mood condition. The preferences of HSE consumers, instead, were not affected by service failures.References available upon request.