Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

examine the effects of magnitude of service failure and brand reputation on customer coping strategies andsatisfaction.This study makes important contributions to service literature. First, we examine the role of customer coping inservice failure encounters. Although psychology literature proposes various coping strategies to deal with stress fromeconomic crisis, health-related outcomes and depression, it is unclear whether they are applicable in service failurecontext. Specifically, we demonstrate the different coping strategies customers employ to manage stress from servicefailures influenced by its magnitude and brand reputation. Second, we show that failure severity and brandreputation interacts to influence customer satisfaction and that coping strategies to mediate this relationship.Although previous studies have examined the role of severity in influencing coping strategies and satisfaction, weemphasize the role of brand reputation in determining customer coping strategies and satisfaction. The rest of thearticle is organized as follows: first, we present a review of relevant literature on failure severity, brand reputation,coping strategies and satisfaction in developing the research hypotheses. Second, the experimental study carried outto test the hypotheses is presented. The paper concludes with the discussion of the results, implications foracademicians and practitioner and limitation and future research directions.Literature ReviewCoping StrategiesMany researchers have indicated how consumers cope to deal with stressful consumption related experiences(Duhachek, 2005; Duhachek and Kelting, 2009 and Gabbott et al, 2010). According to Lazarus and Folkman (1984),coping is ―the constant changing of cognitive andbehavioral efforts to manage specific external and /or internal demands that are appraisedas taxing or exceeding the resources of the person.‖ More recently, Gabbott et al (2010) defined coping as ―privateinternalization by the customer of any negative situational effects associated with service failure.‖ Aappraisal theorystates that an individual‘s coping process is driven by a three-step process of cognitive appraisal (Folkman andLazarus, 1988). First, the individual‘s assesses whether a situation is potentially threatening or not in the primaryappriasal process, and in case a threat is identified, individuals experience