Service recovery strategies have been examined for their effectiveness in compensating for the customer’s loss and in restoring customer satisfaction. Current research on service recovery has largely focused on the customer involved. For instance, the most common recovery strategies hotels used for the guest involved are compensatory (e.g., discount), corrective (e.g., correction), and personal response (e.g., apology). Service recovery research suggest that, while corrective responses are viewed by customers as the minimal action, both apology and compensation have been shown to be effective in increasing customer satisfaction (e.g., Goodwin & Ross, 1992). Due to the prevalence of online reviews, our understanding of service failure and recovery must expand beyond the customer involved to include potential customers who are searching online. The difference between the customer involved and the potential customer is that while the focal customer suffered an economic or psychological loss, the potential customer has not. Past studies suggest that this difference may change the attribution tendency of potential customers (e.g., Wan, Chan, & Su, 2011). Consequently, one can expect that potential customers may use different criteria in assessing recovery strategies. For instance, in line with the equity theory which posits that people in general seek fairness in social interactions (Blodgett et al., 1997), potential customers might be more concerned about justice rather than the compensation. From the company’s perspective, in order to recover effectively from a service failure, it must know whether what works for the customer involved would also work for potential customers. The current research provides evidence that potential customers’ reaction to an online review and a hotel reply is contingent on the perceived similarity between this potential customer and the focal guest (i.e., the customer involved in the incident that the review describes), the type of hotel reply (i.e., no reply, apology, and explanation with no apology). Moreover, results suggest that the psychological mechanism that underlies this relationship is not due to negative emotions but a sense of vulnerability.

In nowadays consumption-based society, products (e.g. food and electronic products) are often thrown away before they are sufficiently used. The aversive consequence of such a lifestyle is becoming more alarming. There is an urgent need for a change in people’s consumption style. How can we make people correct their existing wasteful consumption behaviors and act responsibly? In fact, feelings very often can influence people’s behavior and judgments (Schwarz, 1990), even though the feelings are aroused by irrelevant sources - incidental emotion (Garg, Inman, & Mittal, 2005; Lerner & Keltner, 2000; Schwarz & Clore, 1983). Feelings of guilt and shame are known as moral emotions which are the guidance to ethical behaviors (Tangney, 1991, 2003). Although there is a significant overlapping between these two emotions, they also differ in several important aspects. One critical difference lies in the way the transgressor makes attributions (Niedenthal, Tangney, & Gavanski 1994). A transgressor who attributes the wrongdoing to a specific behavior (i.e. “I’ve done something bad”) is more likely to experience guilt while a transgressor who makes attribution to the global self (i.e. “I’m a terrible person”) is more likely to experience shame (Tracy & Robins, 2004). Given these fundamental differences, we speculate that a guilt-laden consumer is more likely to correct his or her wrongdoing (i.e. wastage) by taking reparative actions to minimize waste but a shame-laden consumer may possibly give up doing so. Findings from an experimental study (N=90) largely support this prediction. Undergraduate students who were made to feel shame were less likely to participate in a recycling campaign organized by the university than the students in the control condition. They reported a lower intention to use recycling facilities provided. On the other hand, participants who were made to feel guilt reported a marginally higher intention to participate in the campaign than the control participants. These preliminary findings suggest that emotional experience derived from other life domains might determine responsible consumption behaviors. Shame, which is commonly regarded as a moral emotion, may not necessarily make people more responsible consumers. The mechanism that underlies this effect may warrant further investigation.