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

customers reason out the potential causes which they were unable to do when they already have a high expectationfrom a highly reputed service provider. Thus they find it easier to analyze the high severe failures of averagelyreputed companies more objectively.Positive thinking was also used more pronouncedly among customers in low severe condition, irrespective of thereputation of the company. However, the interaction effect of brand reputation was found to be crucial amongcustomer in high severe failure condition. Customers were found to perceive the high severe failures with a morepositive bent of mind when the reputation of the company was average. Thus we suggest that even if the failure isperceived to be highly severe such companies have a better chance to reposition themselves in customers‘ minds visa-visa highly reputed company as customer‘s tolerance level for these companies is higher. Customers readily lookat the brighter side of the experience and assess the situation more positively for these companies which they fail todo for highly reputed companies..A final contribution that this study makes in the coping literature is the moderating impact of brand reputation onemotional venting. The results indicated that although there was a significant interaction effect of severity and brandreputation on emotional venting, hypotheses H 2e could not be supported as customers facing high severe failuresfailed to show any difference in emotional venting between high and average reputation company. Customersperceived, that to cope with a high severe failure condition, it is more important to make an effort to rectify thesource of the failure that is causing the stress than to get overpowered with emotions. Thus emotional venting wasfound to be used primarily when the magnitude of the failure was less but the reputation of the company was high.This indicates that due to soaring expectation, even a minor failure of a highly reputed brand, results is anger anddisappointment leading to greater emotional outrage.IMPLICATIONSThe results of our study have several important implications for practitioners. First, although literature providesevidence of diverse coping strategies present which helps an individual to cope with a stressful situation; this studyon service failure context, confirmed that customers stick to only few strategies while coping with high or less severefailure. Thus managers can take appropriate steps to analyze these coping strategies which can be generalized based