The negative effects of failed service recoveries

Research has shown that more than half of attempted recovery efforts fail, producing a ‘double deviation’ effect. Surprisingly, these double deviation effects have received little attention in marketing literature. This paper examines what happens after these critical encounters, which behavior or set of behaviors the customers are prone to follow and how customers’ perceptions of the firm’s recovery efforts influence these behaviors. For the analysis of choice of the type of response (complaining, exit, complaining and exit, and no-switching), we estimate multinomial Logit models with random coefficients (RCL). The results of our study show that magnitude of service failure, explanations, apologies, perceived justice, angry and frustration felt by the customer, and satisfaction with service recovery have a significant effect on customers’ choice of the type of response. Implications from the findings are offered.

Cómo reacciona el personal de hotel cuando observa un trato (in)justo hacia los huéspedes

Este artículo sugiere que el personal de hotel ante un trato (in)justo del hotel hacia los clientes atribuye tal trato a la responsabilidad del hotel y, dependiendo que éste sea justo o injusto, aumentaría o disminuiría sus conductas orientadas al cliente (COBs). Los datos fueron recogidos mediante cuestionarios pasados a 204 empleados de ocho hoteles de lujo en las Islas Canarias (España). Para examinar las hipótesis se utilizaron modelos de ecuaciones estructurales (SEM). No así en el caso de percepciones de justicia distributiva, los resultados muestran que cuanta más justicia procedimental e interpersonal hacia los huéspedes perciban los empleados, más se implican en conductas orientadas al cliente (COBs). Los hallazgos sugieren la necesidad de prevenir episodios de maltrato a los huéspedes por parte del hotel, haciendo especial hincapié en aquellos que son visibles para los empleados, para promover así conductas orientadas al cliente (COBs). Hasta donde nosotros sabemos, este es el primer estudio empírico en donde la justicia organizativa (distributiva, procedimental e interpersonal) dirigida hacia los clientes y las conductas orientadas al cliente (COBs) de los empleados son examinadas conjuntamente en un mismo modelo.

A Construction Management Framework for Mass Customisation in Traditional Construction

A Mass Customisation model is discussed as a competitive positioning strategy in the marketplace adding value to the customer’s end-use. It includes the user as part of the construction process responding to the customer’s demands and wishes. To the present day, almost all proposals for Mass Customisation have been focused on the design phase and single family houses. The reality is that the processes carried out in the work execution are so inefficient that the costs of the Mass Customisation models are assumed by the customer and they do not offer solutions that support the change management. Furthermore, this inefficiency often makes Mass Customisation unfeasible in terms of deadlines and site management. Therefore, the present proposal focuses on achieving the paradigm of Mass Customisation in the traditional residential construction complementary to the existing proposals in the design phase. All this through the proposal of a framework for the integral management in the work execution, which will address change management introduced by the users offering an efficient and productive model that reduces costs in the process. This model will focus on the synergy between different strategies, techniques and technologies currently used in the construction management (such as Lean Construction or Six Sigma), together with, other strategies and technologies that have proven to be valid solutions in other fields (such as Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architecture, etc.).