Exploring customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during Covid‐19 pandemic: An actor–network theory perspective

Abstract

While the debate on online service failure and recovery strategies has been given considerable attention in the marketing and information systems literature, the evolving Covid‐19 pandemic has brought about new challenges both theoretically and empirically in the consumption landscape. To fully understand customers' responses to service failure during a crisis we asked 70 millennials from three European Countries—Italy, France, and the UK—to describe their responses to service failure during the Covid‐19 pandemic (30 completed a 4‐week diary and 40 completed a 4‐week qualitative survey). Drawing on phenomenological, constructivist, and hermeneutical approaches, and utilizing an actor–network theory perspective, the current study proposes a new framework for understanding customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during the Covid‐19 pandemic. Conclusions highlight implications for theory, policy, and management practice through extending comprehensions of service failure recovery processes by examining how marketing policies generate different social impacts during a crisis situation which facilitate the achievement of customer satisfaction and positive outcomes.

COVID-19 research in management: An updated bibliometric analysis

“… Consumer Behaviors(Brown) Consumer Behavior, Accountability, Digital Transformation, Retailing. Li et al, 2021 , Jiang and Stylos, 2021 , Ozuem et al, 2021 , Pantano et al, 2021 . …”

“…They call this phenomenon the “distance proximity effect” and argue that consumers’ tendency towards risk aversion moderates this effect. In another example of research in this category, Ozuem et al (2021) seek to study factors that influence consumers’ reaction to service failure and recovery during the pandemic. They categorize consumers into three groups empathizers (consumers maintain a positive relationship with brands), blanders (consumers with at least normal expectations of service recovery after failure), and churners (consumers with limited emotional attachment to brands).…”

Understanding the accessibility of retail mobile banking during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…First order, second order and aggregate dimensions are generally considered to represent the three stages of this systematic approach (Gioia et al, 2013). Some recent studies have also used a similar thematic analysis process (Ozuem et al, 2021;Naeem and Ozuem, 2021b), therefore we have followed this thematic analysis approach (Gioia et al, 2013). The complete process of first order, second order and aggregated concepts is demonstrated in Figure A1 by following the well-known studies (Gioia et al, 2013;Ozuem et al, 2021).…”

“…, 2013). Some recent studies have also used a similar thematic analysis process (Ozuem et al , 2021; Naeem and Ozuem, 2021b), therefore we have followed this thematic analysis approach (Gioia et al. , 2013).…”

“…The complete process of first order, second order and aggregated concepts is demonstrated in Figure A1 by following the well-known studies (Gioia et al. , 2013; Ozuem et al , 2021).…”