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We studied whether or not men and women respond differently to product failure by investigating how the level of satisfaction changes according to the failure severity and the locus of causality. We conducted an experiment with 2 types of failure attribution (company or consumer) and 2 different levels of failure severity (less severe or severe) with 237 participants. Results showed that, when product failure was severe, the women had lower satisfaction than the men did for consumer-caused failure, but not for company-caused failure. Utilizing a defensive attribution framework, we ran a mediation analysis to identify why such differences occur. The analysis suggested that defensive motivation, whereby the individual avoids self-blame for severe failure, was heightened more for women than for men. Our findings suggest that, when a product failure is consumer-caused, companies must react more rapidly when managing female consumers than when managing male ones. Further, companies should carefully consider recovery strategies that mitigate dissatisfaction, even for less severe company-caused failure.

Although product failure causes both marketers and consumers to incur substantial damage and losses, failures are often very difficult for marketers to control. Building on the defensive attribution literature, we investigated how locus of causality and outcome severity of product failure interactively shape consumers' (N = 366) brand evaluation. The results showed that after a product failure experience, consumers responded with the least favorable evaluation for brand-caused failure, a more favorable evaluation for natural disaster-caused failure, and the most favorable evaluation for consumer-caused failure. However, outcome severity moderated the effects: When the failure resulted in a severe outcome, positive brand evaluation deteriorated in the case of consumer-caused failure only. In addition, brand-blame attribution mediated these relationships. Our findings provide a foundation for recovery strategies in accordance with failure severity and responsible parties.

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