Attributions of Credit? A Reexamination of the Role of Customer Attributions Across Both Successful and Unsuccessful Service Encounters

Abstract

Recent advances in the realm of service failure and recovery have shed new insight into the role of customer attributions in failed service encounters. While this new research focus is noteworthy and has expanded our knowledge of the relationships among many service constructs, few of these studies have expanded their analyses to investigate the effects of key constructs across both successful and unsuccessful service encounters. This trend is surprising given the fact that most service experiences end successfully and even when failures occur, recovery strategies can only be employed in 5 to 30% of these instances.