Review of Services Marketing

The article defines the meaning of “service recovery” and its implications in the business
environment and consequently its connection to the managerial side of the business. On the other
side, the article sets up the implications of this term for customers, as well as their expectations.
In this sense, it is stated that when dealing with service failure, they expect in return besides
explanations and apologies, a compensation for their loss and “procedural fairness”.
However, the culture has an important significance on the perceptions and expectations
of customers when service failure is involved. Moreover, culture is defined as “the sum of all
behavioral norms and patterns collectively shared by a social group”. In the chosen article, the
difference in perception between East Asian and Americans has been explored. In this sense,
there is introduced the idea according to which an unexpected event in a service generates a
corresponding “attribution” from the customer.
For the purposes of the study described, amongst the expectations customers have for the
failure of a service “compensation” has been chosen to be detailed. It is highlighted the idea that
between the two cultures, the East- Asians and the Americans, the last ones will be the one who
will perceive compensation as a positive outcome. This is mainly due to their individualistic
nature, compared to the East- Asian culture, which has a focus on interdependence.
Apart from compensation, an explanation about the service failure is generally amongst
the expectations of customers. In this sense, it is portrayed the idea according to which
Americans will be more prone to diminish the blame on the company when the failure is caused
by an external factor (staff to be trained). For the East- Asians, a causal explanation has little
impact when attributing the blame.
In terms of managerial implications, the conclusion of this first article is for managers to
understand the importance of “cultural bias” when providing solutions for service failures.

The second article chosen points out the responses of customers to service complaining,
as a reaction to service failure. In this sense, the chosen cultures for comparison are the same as
in the previous article, namely the East Asians and the Americans. The article highlights the idea
that East Asians would be less likely to complain but spread negative word of mouth, compared
to Americans. In addition, the article goes on to highlight the idea that culture has an enormous
influence on “people’s beliefs and behaviors”. It is defined as “a set of collective programming,
whose system of values and norms guides people's beliefs and behaviors”.
The article explores the phenomenon widely common upon a service failure, which is the
embarrassment. As it may occur during product purchase, service consumption or service usage.
Moreover, embarrassment is defined as “an emotion that occurs in social interactions when
unwanted events intervene”. In this sense, returning to the comparison between Americans and
East-Asians, the last ones are more prone to react negatively when presented to an embarrassing
service failure. Their reactions are described as: “complaint, switching, and negative word-of-
mouth”.
All in all, the managerial implications suggested are similar to the ones from the first
article and refer to the consideration of the cultural differences when addressing customers’
complaints.

In terms of similarities, both articles challenge the idea of service failure and the cultural
reactions of customers when presenting with different situations. Both articles compare the same
cultures, namely the East-Asians and the Americans. In terms of the description of key words,
both articles define the meaning of “service failure”, “culture”, “independent” and
“interdependent” cultures. The reasons behind the manner of acting when confronted with a
situation of service failure are similar in both articles.
In terms of differences, the first article focuses more on the concept of the “cultural bias”
and customers’ expectations, while the second article explores deeper the reactions of customers
and the situations that arrive after a service failure.