Consumer evaluation of self-service innovation failure: the effect of brand equity and attribution

The purpose of this study is to examine how, when a self-service innovation fails, customers evaluate different levels of brand equity and how the brand equity effect is moderated by consumer attribution and service recovery. Based on two experimental studies, the results indicate that high-equity brands suffer less from the adverse effects of self-service innovation failures when compared with low-equity brands. However, self-service innovation failures are more detrimental to high-equity brands if they are caused by service providers' internal factors as well as low service recovery.