This paper aims to examine how gender interacts with various recovery actions on perceived employee effort, complaint handling satisfaction, and behavioral intention in the case of deviant customer behavior in an East-Asian context. Study 1, a qualitative study, reveals that consumers expect companies to take appropriate remedial actions when a service consumption experience is affected by deviant customer behaviors (e.g., smoking in non designated area). Study 2 employed a 2 (gender) × 6(recovery actions) between subject design in a restaurant setting. Results show that confronting the deviant customer received the highest customer ratings in terms of perceived employee effort, complaint handling satisfaction, and behavioral intention. However, gender moderated the relative effectiveness of recovery actions. Relocating the focal customer was equally good as compensation for women while men were less appreciative of relocation than compensation. In sum, service providers are advised to initiate some form of recovery action in response to deviant customer behaviors.
Most services are delivered in the same location in which they are produced. Thus, the presence of fellow customers in the service delivery is well-recognized in the service literature (Grove and Fisk, 1997, Lovelock, 1994 and Martin and Pranter, 1989). The adverse financial, physical, psychological, and social costs to organizations, service employees, and other consumers caused by deviant customer behaviors have been widely documented (Fisk et al., 2010, Fullerton and Punj, 1993, Harris and Reynolds, 2003 and Reynolds and Harris, 2006). A deviant customer behavior can be defined as the conduct of customer violating the norms and unwritten rules of a service setting in a negative fashion (Reynolds and Harris, 2009).
A review of the literature on deviant customer behaviors revealed that research in a non-western context is scant (Huang, 2008 and Huang, 2010). In addition, to echo the call for further understanding of culture in shaping customers’ reactions toward service failures (Kanousi, 2005 and Wong, 2004), this research extended previous literature in two ways. First, we broadened the scope of recovery efforts by examining the effectiveness of approach-avoidance corrective actions in addition to the more conventional recovery methods (i.e., apology and compensation). Second, we propose that consumers will react differently to service recovery efforts for deviant customer behaviors depending on their gender. Over the years, consumer researchers have investigated a number of interesting issues relating to gender (e.g., Schmitt et al., 1988 and Fischer and Arnold, 1990). Yet, research focusing on the impact of gender on customer evaluations of service encounters is sparse (Mattila et al., 2003 and Mattila et al., 2009). We first conducted a qualitative study to better understand the types of deviant behaviors and customer expectations in an East-Asian context—Malaysia and then examined the gender differences in an experimental setting.
This research explores common deviant customer behaviors in an East-Asian service context—Malaysia. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to include the approach-avoidance strategy to the battery of service recovery actions. The effectiveness of different recovery actions on perceived effort, complaint handling satisfaction, and behavioral intention in a restaurant setting was investigated in light of the role of gender. Our study findings have several important managerial implications.
