Marketing research shows that long-term customer-supplier relationships can reduce consequences of service failures in the hospitality industry. In addition to a long-term, continuous relationship, other types of long-term relationships are also conceivable as influencing factors. This raises the question of whether interactions with a company, based on customer engagement during childhood (childhood engagement) can influence the effect of a service failure. Similar to general child experience, it can be assumed that early engagement in the customer relationship can significantly affect later relationship perception. Furthermore, perceived controllability of the failure also plays a role. If the customer attributes responsibility to the company, negative reactions can arise. To examine this questions, an experimental study with 152 participants was performed. A moderating effect of perceived controllability and childhood engagement on repurchase intention as a consequence of disappointment was found. Previous customer engagement and a credible communication can thus prevent the termination of a relationship after a service failure. Contrary, early engagement does not generally prevent a company from customers’ disappointment. The article contributes to marketing research by integrating 1) the customer disappointment, 2) childhood engagement and its consequences for future interactions with the company as well as 3) the transfer of negative emotions from an employee to the company.

Prior research has investigated the consumer effects of cash and card payments in service settings, but the growing trend of innovative payment with a mobile device hasn’t been considered in the literature so fare. This article represents one of the first studies that considers the adoption of mobile as a new payment method and investigate how the ‘checkout’ phase affect the shoppers’ overall price image of retail stores (OSPI). Results from our studies show that the ‘checkout’ phase is the ‘moment of truth’ for shoppers judging OSPI. We investigate the effects of cash, card, and mobile payments and show that the less transparent a payment method, the lower OSPI judgments of shoppers. In particular, favorable comparisons of basket prices to shoppers’ mental budgets trigger lower store price perceptions. Subsequently, these results have major implications for retailers aiming to lower their OSPI in customers’ minds.