• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.99-130
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• 2012

Service failure and a poor service recovery may lead loyal customers to try to aggressively punish the service firm. We use perceived betrayal and desire for vengeance as the key constructs to understand customer retaliation. Perceived betrayal is defined as a customer's belief that a firm has intentionally violated what is normative in the context of their relationship. And the desire for vengeance is defined as the retaliatory feelings that consumers feel toward a firm, such as the desire to exert harm on the firm. The perceived betrayal and the desire for vengeance are key antecedents of retaliatory behaviors such as vindictive complaining, negative WOM and third-party complaining for publicity. The empirical results suggest that betrayal is a key motivational factor that lead customers to restore fairness by making use of all means, including retaliation. We also find that relationship quality has effect on a customer's response to a failure in service recovery. As the levels of relationship increases, a violation of the proper fairness has a stronger effect on the sense of betrayal experienced by customers. Considerable research has investigated consumer responses to dissatisfaction. But our study examine the response of outraged and highly frustrated consumers. We focus on emotional and behavioral processes that have not been covered by previous dissatisfaction researches and which are unique to outraged consumers caused by extremely dissatisfied purchase experience. It has recently been pointed out by various mass media that the customers not only have positive effects on the company performance but also put the company in crisis. It has often been reported that one customer's dissatisfaction, for example, never ends as it is, and it tends to grow for retaliating upon the company, depending on the level of seriousness of the dissatisfaction. This sometimes leads to a lawsuit against the company. Our study focuses on the customers' emotional and behavioral responses induced by their extreme dissatisfactions. We divided the customer groups into the customers with high relationship quality and the customers with low relationship quality, and the difference between two groups is examined. The objective of this study is to comprehend the causal relationship between the feeling of betrayal caused by the service failure and the retaliatory behavior triggered by the desire of revenge. Our study is divided into three parts. First, a causal relationship between perceived unfairness and the perceived betrayal and desire for revenge. Second, the effect of the perceived betrayal and desire for revenge on the retaliatory behavior is investigated. Finally, the moderating role of relationship quality in the causal relationship between the unfairness in service recovery and the perceived betrayal is analyzed. This study finds the following empirical results. The distributive unfairness, procedural unfairness and interactional unfairness had significant effects on the perceived betrayal. Especially, the perceived distributive unfairness results in the highest perceived betrayal. When the service company does not provide customers proper and sufficient compensation for the failure, they feel the strong sense of betrayal. And in the causal relationship between the perceived betrayal, desire for revenge and retaliatory behavior, the perceived betrayal has significant effects on e desire for revenge. In addition desire for revenge has significant effects on negative word of mouth, retaliatory complaining behavior and publicity of complaints through third group. Therefore the perceived unfairness has effects on retaliatory behavior through the mediation of the perceived betrayal and desire for revenge. Finally the moderating role of relationship quality was examined in the relationship between the unfairness and perceived betrayal. If the customers experienced the perceived unfairness in the process of service recovery, the customers with high relationship quality feel the stronger perceived betrayal than the customers with low relationship quality do. When they experience the double service failure, the customer group with high relationship quality accumulating the sense of trust feel the more perceived betrayal than the customer with low relationship quality who do not have strong trust. The contribution of this study is to find the effect of the service failure on the retaliatory behavior with the moderating roles of relationship quality. The dimensions of unfairness in service recovery is found to have differential effects on the perceived betrayal, desire for revenge. And these differential effect is moderated by the level of relationship quality.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.117-128
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• 2016

In order to extend FOO, this research has the object to demonstrate existing the difference of transferred essence and value between the types of factories(Original factory vs Extended factory). A safety product should save consumers from possible harm or risk, but it sometimes gives directly some damage to consumers. For example, like the issue of a germicide problem in 2016, a germicide killed consumers because of harmful chemistry even it should kept their health. This situation refer to 'Safety product betrayal', we expected that safety product betrayal presence/absence conditions moderate the relationship between types of factories, transferred essence and value. We selected a car air-bag as a safety product for study and implemented one study with total 213 participants. As a result, the participants evaluated the value of an air-bag manufactured throughout an original factory higher than the value of an air-bag manufactured throughout an extended factory. Futhermore, they evaluated the transferred brand essence of an original factory's air-bag higher than an extended factory's. However, in the safety product betrayal presence condition, the difference of value and transferred essence between an original factory and an extend factory was disappeared. Indeed, once consumers experienced or saw safety product betrayal, they avoided to buy or use safety products. Therefore, consumers evaluated the value and transferred essence of betrayed safety products is low without the types of manufacturing factories. From the past to now, there was no paper about the relationship between the types of manufacturing factories(Orignal factory vs Extended factory) and safety product betrayal in Korea. Therefore, this research on FOO and safety product betrayal can give new theoretical and operational contribution. In the conclusion, we discussed the contribution of the study results and proposed the limitation and future study.