‘From fail to prevail’ : How a salesperson’s communication sentiment influences consumer forgiveness in service failures focusing on the role of consumer self-construal

ABSTRACT

Service Failure and Recovery (SFR) is a crucial area of service industry due to the inevitability of service failures, yet firms often struggle with executing appropriate strategies. This research aims to identify the pinpoint optimal “moment of truth” adopting consumer forgiveness serves as a mediator of service recovery and customers’ overall satisfaction. The study focused on the importance of service providers’ communication sentiment during the apology delivery process in order to elicit authenticity from consumers during the recovery process. Data was collected through a survey from 350 individuals of different nationalities, including Chinese and Korean. A scenario-based experiment using self-administered questionnaires was also conducted. The findings indicate that communication sentiment that oriented in warmth have a positive impact on consumers’ willingness to forgive, while task-oriented and coldness-oriented styles have a negative effect. Additionally, consumers who are interdependent tend to be more influenced by communication sentiment when it comes to forgiveness. These results can be valuable for service firms to train their personnel and develop effective service recovery strategies that enhance consumer empathy and forgiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Service recovery
• sales communication
• communication sentiments
• consumer forgiveness
• self-construal

Acknowledgements

This research has adapted from the Master’s dissertation of Jieqiong Luo, Ewha Womans University Business Administration, Seoul, South Korea.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/21639159.2023.2276395.