 To err is human: Tolerate humans instead of machines in service failureNuoya Chen, Smaraki Mohanty, Jinfeng Jiao and Xiucheng Fan Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2021, vol. 59, issue C Abstract: Full automation and self-service technologies have become popular in service marketing. However, customers often face multiple issues when dealing with self-service technologies. This paper examines the effect of service-failure type (employee failure vs. self-service technology failure) on customers' negative responses (dissatisfaction, forgiveness, willingness to switch between employee and self-service technology, and negative word of mouth). Through four experiments with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers and undergraduate students, this research finds that customers have more negative responses for a self-service technology failure than for an employee failure. This is because they get angrier with machines' mistakes than with those of humans. Moreover, empathy alleviates anger and customers’ negative responses in employee failure, but not in self-service technology failure. This research offers service providers new insights by scrutinizing the flip side of complete automation in service marketing. Keywords: Automation; Empathy; Employee; Service failure; Self-service technology (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:59:y:2021:i:c:s0969698920313710 DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102363 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier |
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