Effect of frontline employee's hope and consumer failure during consumer-created emergencies

Purpose: In important interpersonal service interactions with a frontline employee (FLE), consumers at times fail to carry out their share of responsibility in the execution of the service, resulting in a situation of “consumer created emergency”. This might defeat the consumer's goal of availing the service (termed as consumer failure). This study explains the role of employee's hope in managing consumer failure in the situation of consumer created emergencies. Design/methodology/approach: Hypotheses were tested in three experiments that simulated service emergency across a general printing service situation and a travel service situation. Findings: The study shows that: (1) FLE hope has a positive effect on consumer satisfaction, and is mediated by the consumer's assumed effort by the FLE; (2) the effect of FLE hope on consumer satisfaction changes with changing levels of consumer hopefulness about the service outcome; (3) despite situation of consumer created emergency, consumer failure results in low consumer satisfaction due to attribution error and (4) external attribution by the FLE could not significantly rectify consumer's attribution error and hence could not alleviate consumer dissatisfaction. Research limitations/implications: The study suggests relevance and pathways of managing emotions and attributions of consumers and FLEs for superior performance outcomes. Originality/value: The study theorizes and tests the role of hope, which is an important positive emotion during emergencies because frontline service settings have heretofore predominantly focused on managing negative traits and outcomes.