The impact of firm reputation and failure severity on customers' responses to service failures

Purpose – This study seeks to investigate the impact of firm reputation for service quality on customers' responses to service failures. Firm reputation is defined as customers' perceptions of how well a firm takes care of customers and is genuinely concerned about their welfare.Design/methodology/approach – An experiment design methodology was utilized to test the conceptual model. The respondents were adult passengers waiting for flights at a major airport.Findings – Overall, the findings revealed that excellent reputations provide firms with a “buffering effect”, insulating them from some of the negative consequences of failures. Firm reputation moderated the relationship between failure severity and satisfaction, lowered attributions of controllability and stability, and led to higher repurchase intentions following service failures. Attributions of controllability and stability were related only to repurchase intentions; satisfaction did not fully mediate these relationships.Research limitations/impl...