We investigate the influence of two service delivery characteristics, service mechanism and mode, on customers' attributions about the quality of service. One hundred sixty-six students were surveyed about the type of service mechanism (relationship, encounter, and pseudorelationship), the perceived quality of service, and their attributions about the service delivery in three different service modes (face-to-face, telephone, and Internet) across two different service domains (banking and travel). Results indicate that customers with relationships perceive the quality of service they receive higher than those customers with pseudorelationships or encounters. In general, customers make attributions for service quality to the service provider rather than to external factors or themselves. In addition, customers who receive service face-to-face are less likely to give blame or credit to the company than those who receive service over the telephone or Internet. Interactions between perceived service quality and mechanism for different attributions are observed, indicating that the type of service delivery has a greater influence on customers' attributions when service quality is low.
As the United States continue to move from a manufacturing to a service economy, the study of service management has received increased attention from academics and practitioners alike. Services are different from manufactured products in that they are usually intangible, simultaneously produced and consumed, perishable, and heterogeneous (Sasser, Olson, & Wyckoff, 1978). An additional difference is that customers often contribute to the service delivery process Chase & Tansik, 1983 and Mills & Morris, 1986 but do not participate in the manufacture of the goods they buy. This participation of customers in the delivery of service is called customer coproduction Kelley et al., 1990 and Kelley et al., 1992.
Whereas, in its earlier stages, the service literature mainly focused on the differences between goods and services (Shostack, 1977) and the classification of services Albrecht & Zemke, 1985, Lovelock, 1980, Lovelock, 1984 and Zeithaml et al., 1985, more recent research is applying human resource management and organizational behavior principles to service organizations (Schneider & Bowen, 1995). For example, Bowen and Schneider (1985) have pointed out that intangibility, simultaneity of production and consumption, and customer coproduction limit objective reference points for customers to judge and evaluate the quality of service. Therefore, the service experience itself (i.e., the subjective perception of service delivery) often becomes a crucial reference point (Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990). In the absence of objective criteria for judging service quality and employee performance, customers often use tangible cues of the service delivery (e.g., the physical environment, the organization's website, service employees) for their evaluation. It has been argued that the interaction between a customer and a service provider not only affects customers' evaluations, but often is the service itself in the eye of the customer Bowen, 1990, Bowen & Schneider, 1985, Bowen et al., 2000 and Solomon et al., 1985.
Because of customers' unique experience of service delivery and the lack of objective standards on how to judge service quality, it becomes important to understand customers' attributional processes in the delivery of services in order to determine how to improve service. Who or what gets credit for a satisfactory service experience? Who does the customer blame for poor service? Yet, customers' attributions about service have received little empirical attention. The purpose of this study is to examine attributions associated with three types of service mechanisms (relationships, encounters, and pseudorelationships) and three different service modes (face-to-face, telephone, and Internet) in two service domains (banking and travel). We study two different domains to see if our findings are domain specific. We picked banking and travel because they are both available in all three mechanisms and all three modes.
In order to explore a variety of possible effects of service mechanisms and modes of delivery, we examine the way both affect perceived quality of service and attributions about the quality of service.
