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Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management
ISSN: 1936-8623 (Print) 1936-8631 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/whmm20
Service failures and recovery in hospitality
and tourism: a review of literature and
recommendations for future research
Erdogan Koc
To cite this article: Erdogan Koc (2018): Service failures and recovery in hospitality and tourism:
a review of literature and recommendations for future research, Journal of Hospitality Marketing &
Management, DOI: 10.1080/19368623.2019.1537139
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19368623.2019.1537139
Published online: 02 Nov 2018.
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Service failures and recovery in hospitality and tourism: a
review of literature and recommendations for future research
Erdogan Koc
Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Business Administration, Bandirma Onyedi
Eylul University, Bandirma, Balikesir, Turkey
ABSTRACT
Service failures and recoveries have important implications for hospi-
tality and tourism businesses, not only due to general service char-
acteristics of inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability, but also
due to the interactions between service employees and customers.
This review paper shows that the study of service failures and recov-
ery in hospitality and tourism has been largely limited to the studies
of customer satisfaction, service quality, culture, justice, empower-
ment and attribution. This review of studies suggests that the field of
service failures and recovery would gain additional momentum by
combining these studies with organisational theories and concepts
(e.g., organisational citizenship, transaction analysis, emotional
labour, emotional intelligence, stress, burnout syndrome).
摘要
服务失败和恢复对酒店业和旅游业有重要影响，不仅因为服务具有
不可分割性、异质性和易腐性的一般服务特征，而且由于服务员工
和客户之间的交互作用。本文认为，对饭店业和旅游业服务失误与
恢复问题的研究主要局限于顾客满意度、服务质量、文化、公平、
授权与归因的研究。对研究的回顾表明，通过将这些研究与组织理
论和概念相结合，服务失败和恢复领域将获得额外的动力（例如组
织公民、交易分析、情绪劳动、情绪智力、压力、倦怠综合征）。
KEYWORDS
Service failure; service
recovery; hospitality;
tourism; research
Introduction
The Hospitality hospitality and tourism industries are highly prone to service failures due
to the high level of intense customer-employee contact, as well as to problems that arise as
a result of general service characteristics of inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability
(Koc, 2017a). Because of the intense social interaction, hospitality and tourism industry
businesses are often referred to as people businesses (Kim, Wang, & Mattila, 2010).
In line with the importance of service failures and recovery for this industry, research-
ers’interest in the field has grown over the past decade. A basic Google Scholar search of
“service failure”and “service recovery”returns about sixty thousand hits. In addition,
journals dedicate special issues to service failures and recovery (e.g., Journal of Services
Marketing in 2005 and Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights in 2018). There is even
a new book (published by Koc, 2017) titled Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and
CONTACT Erdogan Koc erdogankoc@yahoo.com
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/19368623.2019.1537139
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Hospitality. These basic indicators show that service failures and recovery are becoming
popular topics of study.
Service failures and their recovery are important for hospitality and tourism business
managers, employees and customers. As Kahneman and Tversky’s(1979) Prospect Theory
suggests, people attach significantly more value to not losing than to winning. As a result, a
customer’s negative feelings after a service failure may be much stronger than the positive
feelings when s/he encounters a service that is failure-free. This is why service recovery
paradox (explained below) may take place, and it is probably the reason one study has
found (TARP, 2007) that customers tell an average of 16 people about poor service
experiences but only 9 people about positive experiences (TARP, 2007).
Under normal circumstances, a business may hear from only 4% of its dissatisfied
customers, while the remaining 96% simply leave, as TARP (2007) study showed. Of these
dissatisfied customers, 91% of them switch to other businesses (TARP, 2007), so many
businesses are unaware of their dissatisfied customers (Kim et al., 2010; Swanson & Hsu,
2009). Furthermore, 96% of the very satisfied customers of a service firm would repurch-
ase the same service from the same service business, and 91% of them would recommend
that particular service business to other people. However, these figures drop to 52% and
36% for customers who are merely satisfied, and they drop to 7% and 4%, respectively, for
neutral or unsatisfied customers (TARP, 2007).
Clearly, service failures and recoveries influence customer satisfaction and have impor-
tant implications for effective, efficient operation of marketing management (Schumann,
Wünderlich, & Evanschitzky, 2014;Hoffman, Kelley, & Rotalsky, 2016). Based on the
above, this literature review aims to identify the trends and gaps in hospitality and tourism
literature regarding service failures and recovery, and it aims to offer insights for potential
future studies. The main thrust of the paper is to strengthen service failures and recovery
as a field of study within hospitality and tourism.
Service failure and service recovery defined
A service failure is any type of error, mistake, deficiency or problem that occurs during the
provision of a service, causing a delay or hindrance in the satisfaction of customer needs
(Koc, 2017a). Unsatisfied customer needs cause frustration, and they result in the devel-
opment of negative emotions and behavioural intentions (Lewis & McCann, 2004; Wen
and Chi, 2013). According to Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault (1990), service failures are
grouped in three categories based on the nature of failure (e.g., unavailable or slow
service); the nature of requests/need (e.g., special needs, customer preferences, customer
error, other disruptive customers) and the nature of employee action (e.g., level of
attention, unusual action, cultural norms, gestalt and adverse reactions). Today, with the
development of social media, the service failure and recovery processes have changed.
Customers complain through social media, forums and blogs; and the handling of service
failures starts from there. In line with these developments, researchers (Lee & Hu, 2004;
Lewis, 2015; Sparks & Bradley, 2017; Sparks & Browning, 2010) have turned their
attention to service failures and recovery in cyberspace. These studies have looked at
mainly on-line complaining behaviour. Moreover, researchers like Kim, Lim, and Brymer
(2015) and Jeong and Lee (2017) explored the role of social media management in service
2E. KOC
recoveries. Studies like the above show that the future of the field service failures and
recovery will be shaped by social media and the web.
Service failures take place frequently, due to the basic service characteristics of insepar-
ablity, heterogeneity and perishability. According to Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml
(1991), service failures occur due to service quality gaps. The high probability of failures
and dissatisfaction in service encounters increases customers’perception of risk (e.g.
physiological, financial, performance, social, psychological and time risk) (Koc, 2017a).
This perception causes customers to avoid businesses that may be unable to establish their
trust (Chahal & Devi, 2017; Lepp & Gibson, 2008; Sirakaya & Woodside, 2005)
As a result, service failures have serious implications for hospitality and tourism busi-
nesses. They cause customer dissatisfaction (Wang, Hsu, & Chih, 2014); negative word-of-
mouth (Mattila, 2001); customer switching (Keaveney, 1995; Pranić& Roehl, 2013);
increased costs (Armistead, Clarke, & Stanley, 1995); and lower employee performance
and morale (Bitner, Booms, & Mohr, 1994; Lee, Sparks, & Butcher, 2013). Consequently,
all of these negative results of service failures threaten the survival of hospitality and tourism
businesses unless they are satisfactorily recovered (Koc, 2017a; Weber, 2009).
As a business firm’s reaction to a service failure, a service recovery is defined as of all the
actions designed and implemented to resolve problems and alter customers’negative attitudes
to prevent negative word-of-mouth communications and to avoid losing customers (Miller,
Craighead, & Karwan, 2000). However, when ineffectively handled, service recovery attempts
become further service failures, exacerbating customer dissatisfaction, decreasing customer
trust and producing a “double deviation”effect (Bitner et al., 1990).
Researchers do not, however, have identical views of the definitions of the concepts of
service failures and recovery. For instance, while Grönroos (1990)defined service recovery
as the service provider’s actions in response to a service failure, While While Andreassen
and Best (1977)defined service recovery as a satisfactory resolution of a problem,
Parasuraman et al. (1991)defined service recovery as performing the service right in the
second time. Brown, Cowles, and Tuten (1996) explained the service recovery concept as
fixing or compensating the failure.
Development of service failures and recovery as a field of study
A brief general review of service failures and recovery literature in other major service
industries (e.g., the healthcare industry, retailing, banking) may be helpful for under-
standing these concepts better.
For instance, an operation in a hospital may entail a number of unknowns, triggering
the perception of a significantly high level of risks (physiological, financial, etc.). Perhaps,
this why the earliest service failure study (Carmel, 1988) was carried out in the health care
industry. Carmel’s(1988) early study investigated patients’responses to dissatisfaction
arising from service failures. Later, Tucker and Edmondson (2003) concentrated on the
organisational and psychological dynamics that inhibited system change, enabling orga-
nisations to learn from failures. This study has beensignificantly influential in the litera-
ture, cited widely (Google Scholar) (about 800 citations) in a wide variety of service fields,
including hospitality and tourism.
Retailing, another service industry, was the subject of one of the earliest studies. Palmer,
Beggs, and Keown-McMullan () investigated the repurchase intentions of retailing
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT 3
customers after a service failure. Although retailing is a major industry both in revenues
generated and the number of people involved, it is highly susceptible to service failures,
and the study of service failures and recovery has been rather limited in retailing. Finally,
the banking industry was also reviewed. Lewis and Spyrakopoulos’(2001) studied banking,
and this was one of the earliest and most comprehensive service failures and recovery
studies in the field. Lewis and Spyrakopoulos (2001) investigated the recovery strategies in
the context of Greek banks.
Methodology
This study aims to review the scholarly works published on service failures and recovery in
hospitality and tourism, aiming to support this area as a strong sub-field of research. This
way, scholars can have a better understanding of trends and developments in the field
(Cheng, Li, Petrick, & O’Leary, 2011; Kandampully, Keating, Kim, Mattila, & Solnet, 2014;
Kim, Bai, Kim, & Chon, 2018). For instance, Lemon and Verhoef’s(2016) study provides
researchers with trends and gaps in customer experience research and sheds light on
additional areas where research is needed.
This review study started in February 2016 and ended in January 2018. It was carried
out by searching the key words “service failure,”“service recovery,”“hospitality”and
“tourism”in the ISI/Web of Science database and Google Scholar. Due to the significant
number of papers in the field, the study was narrowed down to papers that had the key
words “service failure”and/or “service recovery”in their titles. There were 13349 studies
(See Table 1) with either or both of the key words “service failure”and/or “service
recovery.”The researchers assumed that papers with these key words in their titles focused
on the field of service failures and recovery in hospitality and tourism.
The classification of the papers was made based on the Google Scholar search first by
searching the keywords “service failure,”“service recovery,”“tourism”and “hospitality.”
Then, each category name (e.g. “culture”) or similar words (e.g. “cross-cultural”) together
with the main key words (“service failure,”“service recovery,”“tourism”and “hospitality”)
were searched, and relevant papers were counted and noted. The relevancy of the papers
for each category was determined by the titles and abstracts of papers.
As mentioned above, the aim of this study is to strengthen service failures and recovery
as a sub-field of study within hospitality and tourism. Since the study concentrated on
papers with the key words “service failure”and “service recovery”in their titles, the study
was not limited to hospitality and tourism journals (e.g. International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management, Tourism Management, Annals of Tourism
Research, and International Journal of Hospitality Management). Additionally, service
journals (e.g., Service Industries Journal, Journal of Service Management, Journal of
Service Research) and business and management journals (e.g., Journal of Business
Research, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Total Quality
Management and Business Excellence) were also included in the study. In addition to
journal articles, the study also analysed a few books that have been influential in shaping
the field of service failures and recovery.
This review of studies was carried out based on the categories offered in Sparks’(2001)
influential book chapter titled “Managing Service Failure Through Recovery.”These were
(See Table 1):
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Table 1. Service failures and recovery research in hospitality and tourism.
Field of Study
Representative Research*
(1996–2006)
(N = 1394)
Representative Research*
(2007–2017)
(N = 11955)
Total
(1996–
2017)
(N = 13349)
Customer
Satisfaction,
Loyalty and
Service Quality
MCollough & Bharadwaj, 1992; Bejour & Palmer, 1998; Smith & Bolton,
1998; Tax & Brown, 1998; Smith et al., 1999; McCollough et al., 2000;
McDougall & Levesque, 1999; Karatepe, Yavas, Babakus, & Avci, 2006;
Ok et al., 2006.
N 400 Iglesias, 2009; Namkung & Jang, 2010; Susskind & Viccari,
2011; Weber et al., 2014; Aguilar-Rojas et al., 2015; Gohary
et al., 2016; Irimiás et al., 2017; Migacz et al., 2018;
Ogbeide et al., 2017, Villi & Koc, 2018.
N 4200 N 4600
% 8.70 % 91.30 %
**
34.46
Culture Patterson et al., 2006; Becker, 2000; Liu, Warden, Lee, & Huang, 2001;
Mueller et al., 2003; Laroche, Ueltschy, Abe, Cleveland, & Yannopoulos,
2004; Lin & Mattilla, 2006
N 318 Johns et al., 2007; Mosquera et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2010;
Koc, 2013; Park et al., 2014; Swanson et al., 2014; Nikbin
et al., 2016;Mihalič& Fennell, 2015; Koc, 2017; Koc, Ar &
Aydin, 2017.
N 2818 N 3136
% 10.14 % 89.86 %
**
23.49
Equity, Justice,
Fairness
Oliver & Swan, 1989; Goodwin & Ross, 1989; Oliver, 2000; McColough,
2000; McCollough et al., 2000; McColl-Kennedy & Sparks, 2003; Mattila,
2005; Patterson et al., 2006.
N 277 Luria & Yagil, 2008; Nikbin et al., 2010; Choi & Choi, 2014;
Guo et al., 2016; Jeong et al., 2017; Migacz et al., 2018;
McQuilken et al., 2017.
N 2665 N 2940
% 9.42 % 90.58 %
**
22.02
Empowerment Bowen & Lawler, 1992, 1995; Boshoff,1997; Sparks et al., 1997; Hocutt
& Stone, 1998; Boshoff& Leong, 1998; Chernish, 2001.
N 229 Koc, 2013; Pranić& Roehl, 2013;Sok&O’Cass, 2015;
Schumacher & Komppula, 2016
N 1214 N 1443
% 84.13 % 10.81
Attribution Goodwin & Ross, 1989; Hess, 1999; McCollough, 2000; Mueller et al.,
2003; Weber & Sparks, 2004
N 170 Chang, 2008;Choi & Cai, 2010; Swanson & Hsu, 2011;
Browning et al., 2013; Tam, Sharma & Kim, 2014; Choi &
Cai, 2016; Nikbin & Hyun, 2017; Kelly, Lawlor, & Mulvey,
2017; Lee & Cranage, 2017; Loo & Boo, 2017.
N 1058 N 1230
% 13.84 %86.16 %
**
9.21
* Representative research starting from the year 1996.
** As a percentage of total service failures and recovery papers in relation with hospitality and tourism
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT 5
(i) customer satisfaction, loyalty and service quality;
(ii) culture;
(iii) equity, justice and fairness;
(iv) empowerment; and
(v) attribution.
This is not a comprehensive bibliometric study, but it aimed to identify major areas of
research as well as gaps in the literature. For each sub-group of study, a representative
sample of papers was selected and explained. In choosing the representative sample
papers, the number of citations of a particular paper and the journal where it was
published were considered. Special attention was paid to papers published in reputable
tourism and hospitality journals.
The study included innovative studies in the literature that identified the gaps and
made an important contribution to the field. By identifying the trends and major sub-
fields of research, as well as the gaps in the literature, researchers will have direction for
areas of new research.
Along these lines, service failure and recovery studies often fall into more than one
category. For instance, a study may investigate empowerment by comparing different
cultural characteristics. When classifying studies, the study’s topics have been noted, and
classification has been made accordingly.
Trends and gaps in service failures and recovery studies in hospitality and tourism
Hospitality and tourism researchers have shown a growing interest in service failures and
recovery as a field of study. The idea of fixing a service failure (i.e., service recovery) was
discussed in a Harvard Business Review article by Andreasen and Best (1977). In practice,
the term “service recovery”was first mentioned in a British Airways service quality
campaign in the late 1980s. Later, Grönroos (1990)defined a service recovery as “’those
activities in which a company engages to address a customer complaint regarding a
perceived service failure’’ (Grönroos, 1990, p. 7). One of the earlier papers on service
failures in hospitality and tourism was by Goodwin and Ross (1989). They investigated
four different service industries, including hospitality and tourism. They also investigated
customers’perceptions of procedural fairness following a service failure in four service
sectors, including travel and restaurant businesses.
A chronological survey of service failures and recovery in hospitality and tourism shows that
between 1990 and 2003, not many studies took place. In this period, only eight hospitality
and tourism papers contained the keyword “recovery”in their titles, and only two articles
contained the keyword “failure(s)”(Lai, Hitchcock, Yang, & Lu, 2018). Smith, Bolton, and
Wagner (1999) were pioneers in the field, developing a model for studying the influence of
service failures and recovery on customer satisfaction in hospitality (Lai et al., 2018).
Hart et al.’s(1990) seminal paper “The Profitable Art of Service Recovery”provided a
new perspective for the study of service recoveries. It turned the attention away from
viewing service recoveries as being reactive responses to service failures to proactive and
strategic responses aimed at establishing and maintaining a competitive advantage.
Beginning with this study, researchers tried to understand consumers’evaluation of
6E. KOC
service recovery experiences (Tax & Brown, 1998) and how service recovery could help
improve businesses (Johnston & Michel, 2008).
In 2001, with her chapter Sparks (2001) made and important contribution and pro-
duced the most comprehensive study of service failures and recovery by providing a
structured framework for future studies. Her chapter was significantly influential in
establishing and shaping service failures and recovery as a field of study within hospitality
and tourism. Specifically, Sparks (2001) explained concepts such as attribution and justice
from the perspective of service failures and recovery. Her dyadic perspective brought
marketing/consumer behaviour and human resource management/organisational beha-
viour theories and concepts together.
After Sparks (2001) chapter researchers’interest in service failures and recovery hospi-
tality and tourism appears to have increased steadily (Lai et al., 2018). In fact, a significant
proportion of studies could be grouped around the main framework that Sparks outlined
(2001) (See Table 1). These areas are i) customer satisfaction, loyalty and service quality; ii)
culture; iii) equity, justice and fairness; iv) empowerment; and v) attribution.
i) Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Service Quality
Studies of customer satisfaction, loyalty and service quality account for 34.46% of studies
among the five major sub-groups of study within service failures and recovery. In general,
these studies (e.g. Bejou & Palmer, 1998; McCollough, Berry, & Yadav, 2000; Smith &
Bolton, 1998; Smith et al., 1999; Tax & Brown, 1998) investigate service failures and
recovery from a broader sense, investigating the influence of service failures and recovery
on customers’perceptions of satisfaction, loyalty and service quality. This trend also
appears in recent research (e.g. Iglesias, 2009; Susskind & Viccari, 2011; Weber, Hsu, &
Sparks, 2014). Among more research examples, Migacz, Zou, and Petrick (2018) and
Ogbeide et al.’s(2017) studies are notable. While Migacz et al.’s(2018) recent research
explored the influence of service failures on airline loyalty, Ogbeide et al.’s(2017) study
concentrated the service recovery attributes of hotels in relation to complaint management
procedures. Migacz et al.’s(2018) contribution is significant as they showed that the level
of customer involvement in a particular type of service influenced their expectations in a
service recovery situation and the formation customer loyalty. For instance, as opposed to
customers in a restaurant or hotel, airline customers did have a lower level of involvement
and interaction with service providers causing them to pay comparatively less attention to
interactional aspects of a service recovery.
Other scholars have explored new avenues for research. For instance, McDougall and
Levesque (1999) examined customer waiting time as a significant factor in service recovery
actions. As one of the earlier studies McDougall and Levesque’s(1999) study showed that
waiting time is so important that delays in recovery may nullify no matter what recovery
strategy was implemented. McCollough and Bharadwaj (1992), Smith and Bolton (1998),
Ok, Back, and Shanklin (2006) and Gohary, Hamzelu, and Pourazizi (2016) investigated
service recovery paradox incidents. Based on two experiments Gohary et al’s(2016)study
made a significant contribution to the filed as it show that the recovery per se did not cause
service recovery paradox. Rather, the value creation in the recovery process led to the service
recovery phenomenon. A true but overrated phenomenon (Michel & Meuter, 2008), service
recovery paradox refers to a situation in which secondary satisfaction following a failure and
recovery effort is higher than the pre-failure satisfaction (Smith & Bolton, 1998).
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT 7
Among recent innovative studies, Villi and Koc’s(2018) explored the influence of the
attractiveness of hospitality employees on customers’service failure perceptions and
responses towards service failures. This study showed that customers gave milder
responses to service failures when the service employee was more attractive. The practical,
social, ethical and legal implications of this study can be investigated in future studies.
Although Aguilar-Rojas, Fandos-Herrera, and Flavián-Blanco (2015) also investigated
customers’responses towards service failures, their study studied the recommendation
behaviour of customers in the event of service failure and recovery by applying social
cognitive theory. Their study also empirically showed that in a service failure setting,
behavioural intentions are conditioned by customers’cognitive, affective and socio-demo-
graphic characteristics. The study produced important theoretical and practical implica-
tions as consumers evaluated service recoveries not only in terms of the results but also
with respect to the personal attention they received during this the recovery process.
Namkung and Jang’s(2010) study investigated the occurrence of service failures in the
stages of service in a restaurant (i.e. reception, ordering, meal consumption, and check-
out). Their study identified service failure gaps and produced important practical implica-
tions. Future studies can explore the influence of Zeigarnik effect, which will be explained
below under the heading Directions for Future Research and Discussion (See also Tables 3
and 4); future studies can also explore the occurrence of service failures in various
hospitality and tourism services ranging from airlines to hotels.
Another study which researched service failure gaps was Irimiás et al.’s(2017). This
study explored film-induced service gaps and failures in relation to tourism destinations.
The main thrust of this study was similar to Parasurman, Berry, and Zeithaml ’s(1991)
type four gap (communications gap—the difference between what an organization pro-
mises and what it delivers). But it still presented an innovative perspective by investigating
how films affected service failures. Irimiás et al. (2017) pointed out that films could
influence destination development by attracting tourists to a specific destination.
However, in some cases, films may cause unreal expectations, resulting in service failures
due to the gap between the features of the actual destination and the features of the
destination as depicted in films. Future studies can investigate how customers perceive
these failures and how these failures may be recovered.
Within the broader area of customer satisfaction, a range of studies concentrated on the
study of emotions (Chebat & Slusarczyk, 2005; Bonning & Cole, 2007; Baker, Meyer, &
Chebat, 2013; Gelbrich, 2010) and investigated the role of emotions and service failures
and recovery from a wide variety of perspectives. For instance, while Baker et al. (2013)
explored the influence of culture on felt and expressed emotions, Gelbrich (2010)inves-
tigated negative feelings that arise after service failures, as well as customers’coping
strategies. Future studies can investigate both customers’and employees’feelings of
guilt and remorse in the event of service failures within this major sub-group of study.
ii) Culture
Social exchange and interaction that take place between service personnel and customers
can be significantly influenced by culture. Culture shapes individuals’preferences,
values, attitudes and behaviour (Mosquera, Uskul, & Cross, 2011;Nikbin,Marimuthu,
&Hyun,2016).
8E. KOC
Service encounters in hospitality and tourism often have an international and cross-
cultural element (Mihalič& Fennell, 2015). For instance, in 2016 over 1.2 billion people
engaged in international tourism activity, making a total contribution of $7.6 trillion to
the world economy (WTO, 2016). In line with this growing international perspective,
service failures and recovery concepts in hospitality and tourism have been extensively
studied from a cross-cultural perspective. As a field of study within the service failures and
recovery literature in hospitality and tourism, culture constitutes 23.49% of studies among
the five sub-groups identified (See Table 1).
As a comprehensive study of cross-cultural aspects of service failures and recovery in
hospitality and tourism, Koc.’s(2017b) book chapter provides an extensive, up-to-date review
of studies in this field. His work discusses the contribution of almost all major studies in
service failures and recovery from the cross-cultural perspective. Researchers who studied
service failures from a cross-cultural perspective, in general, used the frameworks provided by
Hall (1976) (e.g. Lee, Khan, & Ko, 2008; Yuksel, Kilinc, & Yuksel, 2006); Hofstede (1983) (e.g.
Johns, Henwood, & Seaman, 2007; Kim et al., 2010; Patterson, Cowley, & Prasongsukarn,
2006; Swanson, Huang, & Wang, 2014); and Trompenaars (1993) (e.g. Mueller, Palmer, Mack,
&McMullan,2003; Van Vaerenbergh, De Keyser, & Larivière, 2014). While the culture
framework developed by Trompenaars (1993) (Mueller et al., 2003; Van Vaerenbergh et al.,
2014) was studied from the perspective of service employees and managers, the frameworks
developed by Hall (1976) and Hofstede (1983) were studied from the perspectives of service
employees and customers (Johns et al., 2007;Kimetal.,2010; Lee et al., 2008; Patterson et al.,
2006; Swanson et al., 2014; Yuksel et al., 2006). The cultural framework developed by Hofstede
(1983) was preferred most by researchers (about 872 papers between 1996 and and 2017) who
studied service failures and recovery within hospitality and tourism. Trompenaars’framework
was the least studied (about 85 papers between 1996 and 2017).
Studies which used Hofstede’s(1983) cultural dimensions concentrated on the original
four dimensions (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism –collectivism,
masculinity –femininity) (Johns et al., 2007; Kim et al., 2010;Patterson et al., 2006;
Swanson et al., 2014) while overlooking the newer dimensions (long-term orientation –
short-term orientation and indulgence –restraint). While some of the studies that used
the traditional four dimensions explored the influence of a collection of the dimensions
(e.g. Johns et al., 2007; Kim et al., 2010; Patterson et al., 2006; Swanson et al., 2014), a few
others did their research based on one dimension (e.g. Park, Kim, & O’Neill, 2014—
individualism –collectivism; and Koc, 2013—power distance).
Although there are a few cross-cultural studies on short- and long-term orientation, the
indulgence and restraint dimension seems to have been completely overlooked (Koc., 2017b).
To date, not one study has explored the indulgence and restraint dimension from the
perspective of service failures and recovery, even though this dimension may be extremely
relevant for service failures and recovery (Koc et al., 2017; Koc., 2017b). So researchers
interested in service failures and recovery from the perspective of culture may need to
concentrate on the indulgence and restraint dimension (See Tables 3 and 4), which may
have significant implications for the design of service failures and stafftraining.
iii) Equity, Justice and Fairness
Studies which investigated equity, justice and fairness from the perspective of service
failures and recovery in hospitality and tourism also form an important sub-group of
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT 9
study, accounting for 22.04% of total service failure and recovery studies (See Table 1).
Justice theory is founded on Adams’social exchange and equity theory (1963 and 1965),
but the theory and its hypotheses are derived from Festinger’s(1957) work.
Justice theory is a motivational theory based on the premise that employee motivation
is influenced by the feeling of justice. It has been used to understand employee motivation
in human resource management and organisational behaviour. Oliver and Swan (1989)
applied this theory, designed to understand employee behaviour, to understand customers’
perceptions in the event of a service failure or a recovery attempt. Oliver and Swan (1989)
found that customers’perceptions of fairness were affected positively by higher levels of
seller input. Later, Oliver (2000) provided a framework (distributive justice, procedural
justice and interactional justice) to understand customer’s perceptions of service failures
and recovery attempts. Later McColough (2000) and McCollough et al. (2000) helped
establish justice theory in the field of service failures and recovery. In addition, McColl-
Kennedy and Sparks (2003) explored the influence of the feeling of fairness on their
service failure attributions, and Mattila and Cranage (2005) investigated the influence of
choice in service recovery actions on the fairness perceptions of customers. As explained
below, customer choice may increase decisional control and the illusion of control that
customers may feel, and it may result in positive evaluations of various aspects of service
encounters. Hence, researchers can investigate service failures and recovery from the
perspective of the illusion of control and decisional control, as well as other types of
control.
Overall, the literature review shows a steady development of studies investigating
justice theory from the perspective of service failures and recovery in hospitality and
tourism (Choi & Choi, 2014; Jeong, Jeong, Lee, & Lee, 2017; Luria & Yagil, 2008; McColl-
Kennedy & Sparks, 2003; Migacz et al., 2018; Nikbin, Ismail, Marimuthu, & Jalalkamali,
2010) over the past two decades. However, the field has been saturated with studies
concentrating mainly on customer satisfaction, repeat purchase intentions, and complaint
behaviour. However, some studies have been innovative (e.g. Guo, Lotz, Tang, & Gruen,
2016; who studied equity from the perspective of customers’perceived control; and
McQuilken, Robertson, & Polonsky, 2017; who studied equity from the perspective of
other-customer caused service failures).
iv) Empowerment
Employee empowerment is another major sub-area of study that has attracted significant
interest from hospitality and tourism researchers (Bowen & Lawler, 1995; Chernish, 2001;
Sparks, Bradley, & Callan, 1997). Studies of empowerment constitute 10.81% of studies
among the five sub-groups of study within service failures and recovery in hospitality and
tourism (See Table 1).
Levitt (1972)first proposed the application of the production-line approach used in manu-
facturing to service delivery. This approach was successfully implemented by various service
businesses (Boshoff,1997;Boshoff&Leong,1998), and it provided a rigid script to minimise
employee discretion. However, during incidents of service failures, this approach was proble-
matic, since without empowerment, employees had no power to deal with the failure.
Berry and Parasuraman (1992)first mentioned the concept of empowerment in relation
to service failure and recovery. Their study discussed Federal Express employees who were
empowered to spend up to $100 to resolve a customer problem. Bowen and Lawler (1992)
10 E. KOC
were the first two scholars who emphasized the importance of empowerment in service
failures in hospitality and tourism. Later, Sparks et al. (1997) explored the impact of
customer empowerment and communication on customers’evaluations in the hospitality
industry. Boshoffand Leong (1998) explored empowerment in connection with customer
attribution in airlines.
The service recovery and customer satisfaction model developed by Hocutt and Stone
(1998) is also important. It provided a framework to understand the role of empowerment
in relation to service recoveries. Hocutt and Stone’s(1998) model explained how empow-
erment could be instrumental in increasing employees’job satisfaction, responsiveness,
empathy and courtesy.
Numerous studies have also investigated empowerment from the perspective of service
failures and recovery. Some of these studies bore similarities, investigating empowerment
in relation to customer satisfaction in various subsectors of hospitality and tourism. Pranić
and Roehl (2013) looked at empowerment and service recovery from the customer’s
perspective and developed a customer empowerment scale for service recovery attempts.
Koc’s(2013) scenario-based study explored employee empowerment from the perspective
of the speed of recovery and compared two cultures in terms of power distance. Koc’s
(2013) study also explored how hotel employees used different ways of communicating
service failures (direct or mitigated) to their superiors in high- and low-power distance
cultures. This study found that while service employees in low-power distance cultures
communicated service failures to their superiors more directly, service employees in high-
power distance cultures used mitigated speech when communicating service failures to
their superiors.
Among the innovative empowerment studies, Sok and O’Cass (2015) investigated the
role of empowerment in relation to service innovation in four industries, including
tourism. Likewise, Schumacher and Komppula (2016) indicated that employee empower-
ment showed the influence of written instructions on employees’perceptions of being
empowered. They concluded that without written instructions, frontline hotel employees
felt insecure in resolving conflict, resulting in inconsistencies among staffin service
recovery attempts.
v) Attribution
Compared with the other fields of study, attribution is one of the least studied. Studies on
attribution accounted for only 9.20% of the studies among the five sub-groups of study
(See Table 1).
Attribution refers to the effect of ascribing problems in service to a particular source or
cause (Jolibert & Peterson, 1976). In general, researchers tended to use the attribution
framework (locus of causality, controllability and stability) developed by Weiner (1986).
The term “locus of causality”refers to whether the cause of the service failure is internal
(e.g., a lack of proper reservation procedures at a hotel) or external (e.g., a delay due to the
strike of airline workers). The term “controllability”is about perceived intentionality, or
whether the cause occurred on purpose (i.e., whether it was controllable, such as an
unresponsive service employee). Finally, the term “stability”refers to customers’percep-
tions of whether negative circumstances within which the service failure occurred will
continue (Betancourt & Weiner, 1982).
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT 11
Goodwin and Ross (1989) conducted one of the pioneering studies of attribution and
equity, investigating the responses of air travel and restaurant customers. Later, Hess’
(1999) doctoral thesis comprehensively discussed attribution in relation to service failures,
investigating the severity of service failures on the overall satisfaction of customers with an
airline. As a recent comprehensive study on attribution and service failures in tourism and
hospitality, Loo and Boo’s(2017) book chapter also overviewed the topic.
Regarding the industries that have been studied in terms of attribution and service
failures, the airline industry appears to have been studied most (about 800 papers between
1996–2017), probably due to the frequency of service failures. For example, Nikbin and
Hyun (2017) explored airline travellers’casual attribution, pre-recovery emotions, and
negative behavioural intentions after a service failure. In addition to this study’s practical
implications, Nikbin and Hyun’s(2017) study had significant theoretical implications,
offering a model for analysing the direct influence of airline travellers’casual attribution of
stability and controllability on the development of negative behavioural intentions.
As a study with both theoretical and practical implications, Chang’s(2008) research
investigated the concept of attribution from the perspective of emotions, equity and
satisfaction judgements of tourists. In similar vein, while Swanson and Hsu’s(2011)
study investigated the influence of the recovery locus attributions and service severity
on word-of-mouth communication and repurchase intentions in the hospitality industry,
Choi and Cai (2010 and 2016) published two papers on the moderating role of loyalty in
relation to customers’service failure attributions.
In line with the view that culture shapes an individual’s preferences, values, attitudes
and behaviour (Mosquera et al., 2011; Nikbin et al., 2016), a number of researchers (e.g.
Mueller et al., 2003; Swanson & Hsu, 2011; Tam et al., 2014) investigated the influence of
culture on customers’attribution in service failures and recoveries.
More recently, based on developments in customer information collection and evalua-
tion, Browning, So, and Sparks (2013) studied the influence of online reviews on customers’
perceptions of service quality. Again, Lee and Cranage (2017) and Kelly et al. (2017)
investigated service failure perceptions of tourism and hospitality customers from the
perspective of self-service technologies.
An overall evaluation of service failures and recovery literature
The review of service failures and recovery literature in hospitality and tourism showed
that research in this area has been largely limited to the the five areas identified. However,
a number of researchers identified gaps in the literature and produced innovative and
original research by bringing in new perspectives. Among them, La and Kandampully
(2004) studied market learning behaviour; Koc, Ulukoy, Kilic, Yumusak, and Bahar
(2017b) studied the influence of customer participation (physically, mentally and emo-
tionally); Sembada, Tsarenko, and Tojib (2016) and Wong, Newton, and Newton (2016)
studied customer power; Pranićand Roehl (2013) and Prentice, Han, and Li (2016)
studied customer empowerment; Kim and Jang (2016) and Kim (2017) studied the
memorability of service failures; Kelly, Lawlor, and Mulvey (2017) studied self-service
technologies; and Villi and Koc (2018) studied employee attractiveness.
A review of the literature also shows some of the most influential and prolific research-
ers in the field (See Table 2)–researchers such as Ruth N. Bolton, Anna S. Mattila, Bo
12 E. KOC
Edvardsson, Scott W. Kelley, Beverley Sparks and Janet R. McColl-Kennedy. These
researchers published 5, 24, 4, 10, 38 and 11 publications, respectively, in top-tier journals
and book chapters published by major international publishers. These researchers received
4515, 7548, 1372, 4050, 2307 and 1433 citations (Google Scholar), respectively.
Additionally, the review of the literature shows that the publication of service failures
and recovery papers in hospitality and tourism has not been limited to hospitality and
tourism journals alone, as explained in the methodology section.
Directions for future research and discussion
As explained above, literature in service failures and recovery both in hospitality and
tourism and in other service industries has been mainly limited to the five areas of study:
(i) customer satisfaction, loyalty and service quality; ii) culture; iii) equity, justice and
fairness; iv) empowerment; and v) attribution).
Although several researchers made noteworthy attempts to strengthen this field of study
both in terms of scope and depth, gaps have been identified in the literature. Although some
ideas for future research were given above, this section offers additional direction.
As mentioned above, the dyadic perspective of service failures and recovery was first
established in Sparks (2001) book chapter and expanded in Koc’s(2017a) edited book.
This perspective may shed light on the future development of the field. In addition to the
topics covered in Sparks (2001) book chapter (organisational justice, empowerment,
culture and attribution), Koc’s(2017) edited book covered the influence of technology,
emotional contagion, other customers on service failure perceptions of customers, staff
training for service failures and recovery, the influence of customers’waiting time, and
other areas.
Overall, the literature shows that researchers have expanded the service failures and
recovery field by adding newer marketing and organisational behaviour theories and
concepts. Based on this dyadic nature of service failures and recovery, further theories
of marketing/consumer behaviour and organisational behaviour/human resource manage-
ment have been identified. These theories and concepts may be helpful for future research
Table 2. Most influential scholars in the field of service failures and recovery.
Scholars*
Total
Citations
Number of
Publications*§
Total SFR Citations
Received*§
Citations Per
Publication*§
1 Ruth N. Bolton 25224 5 4515 903
2 Anna S. Mattila 15790 24 7548 314.5
3 Bo Edvardsson 14235 4 1372 152.4
4 Scott W. Kelley 10258 10 4050 405
5 Beverley Sparks 7515 38 2307 60.7
6 Janet R. McColl-
Kennedy
6801 11 1433 130.3
7 Amy K. Smith 6686 8 4777 597.1
8 Barbara R. Lewis 4095 3 509 169.7
9 Scott R. Swanson 3685 9 755 83.9
10 Michael. A.
McCollough
2225 8 1683 210.4
* Hospitality and tourism publications
** Figures as of the end April 2018
§Figures for publications with key words “service failures”and “service recovery”in their titles.
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT 13
(See Tables 3 and 4)tofill in gaps in the literature. However, researchers can also apply
theories and concepts in other fields to the service failures and recovery field. For instance,
Deshpandé, Farley, and Webster (1993) investigated service failures and recoveries from
the perspective of corporate culture.
Another emerging field of study in this area is that of emotional intelligence. This field
of study is examined in conjunction with understanding customers and employees.
Scholars have recently started using emotional intelligence in service research (Koc,
2017a). However, only a limited amount of research has been done on emotional intelli-
gence with a focus on consumers. Tsarenko and Strizhakova (2013) studied consumers’
ability to cope with service failures, but more research is needed. As explained above the
level of social interaction and exchange in tourism and hospitality is high. As there is a
plethora of studies pointing out the importance of emotional intelligence in social
Table 3. Future directions for service failures and recovery research in hospitality and tourism (hrm and
organisational behaviour).
Human Resource Management & Organisational Behaviour Theories and Concepts
Topic Sample Key Terms Explanations
Emotional intelligence Interactional failures, social interaction How may service employees’level of emotional
intelligence influence the occurrence of service failures
and efficient and effective recovery attempts?
Social anxiety and
social avoidance
Interactional failures, social
interaction, initiative to solve
problems.
How may service employees’levels of social anxiety and
social avoidance influence the occurrence of service
failures and efficient and effective recovery attempts?
Stress, emotional
labour and the
burnout syndrome
Surface behaviours, faking, imitation What are the implications of surface behaviour in
emotional labour in terms of service failures and
recoveries?
Transaction analysis Communication, rationality, dogmatic
behaviour, neurotic behaviour
Which mode of communication is common among
service employees especially in situations of service
failures and recovery?
Emotional contagion Social learning, impression
management
How a failure may be experienced by a customer and
how may his/her treatment during the service failure
influence other customers?
Locus of control Attribution, blame, responsibility How may a customer with a high or low level of external
locus of control attribute service failures?
Human resource
management
activities
Recruitment, selection, training, pay
and reward
How may human resource management activities
influence service failures and recovery actions?
Organisational justice
and organisational
culture
Distributional, procedural and
interactional justice
How may organisational justice perceptions of service
employees influence service failures and recovery actions?
Service orientation and
service culture
Service skills, service orientation,
service culture, recruitment and
selection, training
What sort of relationship might exist between the level of
service orientation and occurrence of service failures and
efficiency of service recoveries?
Teamwork, leadership
and change
management
Team building, team dynamics, group
conflict, groupthink, leadership styles
How may groupthink influence the occurrence of service
failures? What would be the influence of cross-functional
teams on efficient and effective recovery of service
failures?
How may a particular type of leadership in a service
organisation influence service failures and recovery
attempts?
Other organisational
theories and
concepts
Organisational silence, whistle-blowing and organisational climate, organisational commitment,
organisational loyalty, organisational trust, organisational innovation, organizational cynicism and
organisational alienation, big five personality traits which may influence organisational behaviour.
**These key terms/theories/concepts may be investigated in relation to various aspects of service
encounters and service failures.
14 E. KOC
interaction and communication (Poulou, 2017; Sigmar, Hynes, & Hill, 2012; Walden,
Jung, & Westerman, 2017), further studies in service failures and recovery may concen-
trate on investigating the level of emotional intelligence of service staffand customers in
relation to various aspects of service failures and recovery.
The emotional abilities of service employees in hospitality and tourism may be sig-
nificantly relevant for identifying service failures and the ensuing recovery actions (Koc,
2017a). Another emotion-related theory which has not been investigated in relation with
service failures and recovery is emotional labour. For example, surface acting, a dimension
of emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983), may serve as a source of service failure and may
render service recovery attempts ineffective, as emotional labour increases perceptions of
job stress, decreases satisfaction, and increases distress (Bliese, Edwards, & Sonnentag,
2017; Pugliesi, 1999).
Continuing with research into social exchanges within service failures and recovery,
social anxiety and social avoidance levels of hospitality and tourism employees (Liebowitz,
1987) may have a significant relationship with service quality problems, service failures and
recovery actions. Liebowitz’s(1987) social avoidance and anxiety scale has been used to
study daily social life interactions and education, but it could also be used to study
hospitality and tourism. Social anxiety or social phobia is the fear of being evaluated
negatively by others (Liebowitz, Gorman, Fyer, & Klein, 1985). It is generally characterised
Table 4. Future directions for service failures and recovery research in hospitality and tourism (market-
ing and consumer behaviour.
Marketing & Consumer Behaviour Theories and Concepts
Topic Sample Key Terms Explanations
Branding Brand image, brand value, positioning How may brand image influence customers’service recovery
expectations?
Zeigarnik effect Psychic tension, need for closure In which stage of service delivery are service failures more
likely?
Cognitive
dissonance
Guilt, regret, shame and anger What would be the level of cognitive dissonance after specific
types of service failures?
What sort of service failures cause feelings of guilt, regret,
shame or anger?
VALS Model Values, attitudes and life styles What sort of relationship might exist between various VALS
groups and customer response towards service failures?
Customer control Cognitive control, decisional control,
behavioural control
How would customer control influence various aspects of
service delivery, service failures and recovery?
Relationship
marketing
Social interaction, communication How may various relationship marketing activities influence
service failure and recovery perceptions of customers?
Personality traits,
self-concept
Openness, extroversion, agreeableness
neuroticism, conscientiousness
How may a personality trait influence the perception of
service failures and recovery expectations?
How does self-concept influence recovery expectations of
customers?
Customer’s feeling
of control
Cognitive control, behavioural control,
decisional control
How may feelings of various types of control influence service
failure perceptions of customers and expected recovery
actions?
Customer
involvement
Level of social and financial risk,
hedonic consumption
How may involvement induced by hedonic motives influence
service failures perceptions of customers?
Tourism product
and destination
Special interest tourism (e.g. golf
tourism, culinary tourism, Thana
tourism etc.).
How may participation in a particular type of special interest
tourism (e.g. e.g. golf tourism, culinary tourism and Thana
tourism) influence customers’/tourists’service failure
perceptions and service recovery expectations?
Other marketing
theories and
concepts
Elaboration likelihood model, theory of
reasoned action
These key terms/theories/concepts may be investigated in
relation with various aspects of service encounters and
service failures.
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT 15
by an intense fear of what others think about an individual (Gross, Sheppes, and Urry, 2011;
Kashdan et al., 2013) and usually results in the avoidance of social interaction. Staffwith
high levels of social anxiety and avoidance may have problems in interactions in hospitality
and tourism service encounters.
Another gap of research in relation to social exchanges is the modes of communication
(e.g. the child, the parent and the adult) explained in transaction analysis (Berne, 1975). As
outlined above social interaction is at the heart of service encounters. The quality of social
interaction not only determines service recovery perceptions but also it may be the actual
cause of a service failure. Future studies can measure the responses of both customers and
employees to service failures and recovery attempts in terms of the three modes of
communication. The use of communication modes such as critical parent and rebellious
child by service staffmay have significant negative implications for service failures and
recovery actions. Staffmay be trained, based on research, to develop their skills to
communicate in the adult mode, especially when engaging in service recovery.
Further gaps in the literature, specifically in organisational behaviour theories, stress
and burnout syndrome of service employees and the influence of various leadership styles,
seem to have been overlooked in terms of service failures and recovery. But these theories/
concepts may have significant implications. A gap also exists in research on organisational
justice in relation to service failures and recovery. Studies so far have concentrated on
justice from the perspective of customers; future research can investigate service failures
and recovery from the perspectives of organisational justice and organisational culture.
Moreover, it appears that researchers who have studied service failures and recovery from
the cultural perspective have mainly explored the topic from the viewpoint of Hofstede’s
(2015) traditional cultural dimensions of power distance, risk aversion, femininity and
masculinity, collectivism and individualism and long-term orientation. As mentioned
above, researchers have noted the relatively new cultural dimension of indulgence and
restraint, added by Minkov and Hofstede (2010). The indulgence and restraint dimension
can be a prolific area of study for hospitality and tourism, since dimension primarily focuses
on attitudes towards leisure, fun and hedonic behaviours (Koc et al., 2017). For instance, while
people in indulgence cultures are more likely to remember positive experiences, people in
restraint cultures are more likely to remember negative experiences (Minkov & Hofstede,
2010). This difference between cultures may have important implications in service failures
and recovery actions in general and service recovery paradox in particular.
As a cultural characteristic, restraint is associated with lower spending tendency, thrift
and lower engagement in leisure-, fun- and pleasure-related activities (e.g., in various
hospitality and tourism services) (Bathaee, 2011; Hofstede, 2015). However, cultures with
high levels of indulgence can be characterized as fun-, entertainment- and leisure-
oriented. Compared with high restraint cultures, people in indulgence cultures may attach
more importance to leisure and pleasure, resulting in more hedonic behaviours (Koc et al.,
2017). Hence, both customers and employees from indulgence and restraint cultures may
have different perceptions and may show different behaviours towards various aspects of
service failures and recovery.
Another cultural topic relevant for service failures and recovery in hospitality and
tourism is intercultural sensitivity, which is the ability to notice cultural differences and
to sense their importance (Wang & Zhou, 2016). Like emotional intelligence, intercultural
sensitivity can be developed as an ability (Agrusa, Küpper, & Sizoo, 2010). Research shows
16 E. KOC
that there is a close relationship between emotional intelligence and intercultural sensi-
tivity. These abilities may collectively improve employees’management of diversity and
interaction with people from other cultures (Cherniss, 2002; Goleman, 1995; Li, Canziani,
& Barbieri, 2018).
Another gap in the literature is a theory/effect called Zeigarnik effect. This effect, psychic
tension or the need for closure, was first discovered in 1927 while Kevin Lewin, sitting in a
restaurant in Vienna, noticed that waiters remembered orders while they were serving the
customers only when the process of serving was incomplete. Later, after they had completed
the process of serving all orders, waiters had little recollection of orders they had carried out
(Burke, 2011). Using this theory, researchers can investigate the frequency of service failures
in terms of the phases of service delivery. Also, since Zeigarnik effect suggests that an
individual’s need for closure can also prevent procrastination and delays, the theory may be
used in investigating and designing service recovery actions as well.
The probability of service failures in hospitality and tourism activities increases the
perceptions of risk by customers (Sirakaya & Woodside, 2005). Langer’s(1983) theory of
control may be used to investigate various aspects of risk-related issues in service failures
and recovery. Customer choice and decisional control may result in the illusion of control,
which may cause customers to expect success more than objective probability would
suggest (Langer, 1983).
Finally, a review of service failures and recovery research in hospitality and tourism
shows that researchers largely depended on scenario-based and experimental design studies
(e.g. Kim & Jang, 2014;Kocetal.,2017; Mattila, Cho, & Ro, 2009; McCollough et al., 2000;
Swanson & Hsu, 2011) and critical incident studies (e.g. Lewis & Clacher, 2001;Lewis&
McCann, 2004;Mattila,1999;Swansonetal.,2014;Tse&Ho,2009). A few studies used
survey questionnaires (e.g. Arif, Gupta, & Williams, 2013;Susskind,2015) or written
complaints/on-line reviews (e.g. Fernandes & Fernandes, 2017; Levy, Duan, & Boo, 2013).
According to Kim and Jang (2014), scenario-based studies are often used to study
service failures and recovery due to their suitability. Experimental design and scenario-
based studies, though they may improve validity of research, are usually done at the
expense of external validity (Michel, 2001). The use of critical incident technique may also
be problematic since retrospective-self reports may cause biases due to memory lapse,
rationalization tendencies and consistency factors (Smith et al., 1999).
The use of scales in service failures and recovery may increase reliability and validity of
research in this field, but they are currently rare. Pranićand Roehl’s(2013)customer
empowerment scale used in combination with service failures and recovery is one example.
Scale development in service failures and recovery may help contribute to the field (Gursoy,
Uysal, Sirakaya-Turk, Ekinci, & Baloglu, 2014). Researchers should note that the scales in
most of the organisational behaviour theories/topics recommended above have are available
for use. Hence, the use of the topics recommended above, together with their scales, may
open up new avenues for research and strengthen the validity and reliability of research in
service failures and recovery. A combination of these scales with other methods such as
scenario or experiment based studies or critical incident technique may allow the triangula-
tion of data, increasing reliability and validity of research (Koc & Boz, 2014).
Finally, psychophysiological tools such the EEG (electroencephalography), eye tracker,
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and facial recognition may be helpful for
research in service failures and recovery in hospitality and tourism. Currently, the use of
JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY MARKETING & MANAGEMENT 17
psychophysiological tools is becoming popular in understanding various aspects of hospi-
tality and tourism (Boz, Arslan, & Koc, 2017).
Conclusion
This literature review showed that the study of service failures and recovery has been
limited to the studies of customer satisfaction, service quality, culture, justice, empower-
ment and attribution. This review shows that the field of service failures and recovery
could be significantly enhanced by combining these studies with organisational theories
and concepts (e.g. organisational citizenship, transaction analysis, emotional labour,
emotional intelligence, stress, burnout syndrome). Most of these organisational behaviour
concepts and theories have their own scales available for use in research. The use of these
concepts and theories in research may improve service in the industry. The perspectives
provided in this study support the development of service failures and recovery as a strong
sub-field of research.
ORCID
Erdogan Koc http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3183-2574
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