The influence of childhood engagement in the context of hospitality service failure evaluation / Marie-Christin Papen, Florian U. Siems, Werner H. Kunz

Marketing research shows that customer relationship management can reduce consequences of service failures. The question is how long a former customer engagement can still have an effect on a current critical incident. In extreme cases, this means whether and how interactions between company and customer during childhood can still influence the effects of a service failure. This article proposes that engagement with a company during childhood (childhood engagement) can affect later perceptions of the relationship. An experiment with 152 participants showed that perceived controllability and childhood engagement moderated the effect of disappointment on repurchase intention. Customers with childhood engagement evaluate a service failure more favorably than customers without childhood experiences. Furthermore, customers are likely to react negatively if the responsibility for the failure is attributed to the company. Accordingly, from a managerial perspective, childhood engagement and credible communication can prevent the ending of a customer relationship after a failure.

Hotel and Restaurant Management.