No laughing matter, or a secret weapon? Exploring the effect of humor in service failure situations

Sarah Kobel and Andrea Groeppel-Klein

Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 132, issue C, 260-269

Abstract: Several psychological studies indicate that, in certain situations, humor can reduce tension and lead to a feeling of relief. In the literature on service management, however, the effect of humor in appeasing disgruntled consumers when services break down is almost unexplored. This paper seeks to answer the question: Can humor have a positive effect in such situations, leading to greater “leniency” on the part of the injured party, or does it intensify the consumer's negative experience of the service? We do this by analyzing consumer reactions to humor as a tool for “service recovery”. We conduct a number of vignette experiments, the results of which confirm the positive effects of self-deprecating humor on customers, but at the same time show that the humor has to be experienced as particularly funny, otherwise it is less effective than traditional service recovery tools, such as a sincere apology or financial (or other) compensation.

Keywords: Humor; Relief; Leniency; Service encounter; Service failure; Service recovery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296321002721
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:132:y:2021:i:c:p:260-269

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.04.034

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().