After a service failure, consumers make appraisals or assessments about the characteristics of this failure. These appraisals, in turn, affect how a consumer responds emotionally and behaviorally. Using an appraisal-tendency framework, we predict that two negatively valenced emotions (anger and regret) underlie or mediate the effects of consumers’ appraisals about service failure on post-purchase behaviors. Consistent with the predictions, in a laboratory study, we find that anger plays a powerful role in explaining retaliatory behaviors, and that both anger and regret account for the effect of appraisals on conciliatory behaviors. We extend the same appraisal-tendency framework to predict how changes in emotions underlie the effects of recovery efforts on post-purchase behaviors. Again consistent with predictions, in the laboratory study and in a web-based study, we find that recovery efforts that reduce anger decrease retaliatory behaviors. However, both studies provide less clear-cut evidence about the emotional mediators between recovery efforts and conciliatory behaviors. Because conciliatory behaviors are important behaviors for businesses to promote, future research should explore what other emotions explain recovery effort effects on conciliatory behaviors. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007Post-purchase, Anger, Regret, Recovery,

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We conduct two studies to examine if, when, and why communication strategies using social comparisons can effectively restore emotional equilibrium after a service failure, and thus aid recovery efforts. In our first study, we find that after a service failure, like compensation, downward social comparisons reduce anger and improve post-purchase behavioral intentions (including exiting, complaining to management, engaging in negative word-ofmouth, and complaining to a third party). However, when two recovery tools, compensation and downward social comparisons are used together they do not have an additive effect. Additionally, we show that anger mediates the social comparison effect. In a second study, we further explore the social comparison effect and the financial compensation effect using complete and incomplete downward social comparisons and multiple levels of financial compensation. Our findings indicate that complete downward social comparisons are particularly effective at improving all four types of post-purchase behavioral intentions when financial compensation is non-existent or relatively low. Finally, we discuss implications for theory and practice.

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