Coping with Service Failure Via Rumination and Ewom: A Fuzzy Clustering Perspective

Abstract

This study aims to segment strategies consumers use to ‘cope’ with service failure using a novel clustering algorithm. It evaluates whether identified customer segments exhibit different anger prototypes, alongside variations in felt intensity therein. It also investigates whether different segments employ diverse rumination behaviours in response to service failure, with this used to predict manifestations of eWOM. To do so, customers with experience of hotel industry service failure within the Iranian context were surveyed. Findings suggest that four forms of coping behaviour activate different rumination behaviours in response to anger prototypes and their felt intensity. Further, logit models demonstrate that the three eWOM archetypes are driven by different predictors; suggesting that consumers’ online behaviours following service failure are not homogeneous, but instead shaped by the coping strategy employed. Implications for theory and practice are offered by way of conclusion.

Keywords: service failure, rumination, coping, anger, eWOM