Why didn’t it work out? The effects of attributions on the efficacy of recovery strategies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of attributions on the efficacy of service recovery strategies in preventing customer defection following a service failure. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical investigation is carried out on the retail banking industry with a final sample of 448 real cases of customer retention or defection after a service failure. Findings – The results of the study not only highlight the relevance of intentionality as an additional factor in explaining customer defection, but also show the effects of some attributional dimensions (intentionality and controllability) on the efficacy of some recovery strategies (redress, apology and explanation) applied by companies to prevent post-complaint customer defection. Practical implications – The efficacy of the recovery strategies depends on the causal attributions that the customer makes about the service failure. Originality/value – This study analyzes not only the effects of traditional dimensions of attribution (stability and controllability), but also the additional effect that intentionality attributions may have on actual customer defection (not intentions). Moreover, it analyzes their effects on the effectiveness of recovery strategies in preventing customer defection. Most of these effects have never been empirically analyzed in the literature.