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Underscoring trainer's lack of effort or talent in service failure of personal fitness training: customers' negative word-of-mouth response

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Abstract

Underpinned by attribution theory and relationship norm theory, this study investigated whether, why, and when provider attribution of service failure influences negative word-of-mouth. Our first experiment verified that trainers' attribution of their service failure to lack of effort (vs. lack of talent) causes greater negative word-of-mouth intention and that this effect is mediated by perceived responsibility. Our second experiment confirmed that to customers with more communal (vs. exchange) norms, the effect of perceived responsibility on negative word-of-mouth intention becomes weaker (vs. stronger). These findings advance service failure and performance attribution literature and provide insights into how to address service failure.

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Data Availability

Our collected data of (a) Consumer survey, (b) Pretest, (c) Study 1, and (d) Study 2 will be available on acceptable and reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, Alma College, Swanson Academic Center Unit 236, 614 W Superior St, Alma, MI, 48801, USA

    Sangchul Park

  2. Division of Sport Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

    Hyun-Woo Lee & Calvin Nite

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  1. Sangchul Park
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  2. Hyun-Woo Lee
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  3. Calvin Nite
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Correspondence to Sangchul Park.

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Appendix: Measurement items

Appendix: Measurement items

Variables: Items

Manipulation Checka (Leung et al. 2020), \(\alpha\) = 0.98 (0.97)

The trainer explained that the poor service of the personal trainer occurred because he______

1. did not put much effort to \(\leftrightarrow\) was not naturally talented at providing a high-quality service

2. did not work hard to \(\leftrightarrow\) was not talented at providing a high-quality service

3. did not spend much time on \(\leftrightarrow\) had no innate talent for providing a high-quality service

Perceived Responsibility (Botti and McGill 2006), \(\alpha\) = 0.80 (0.83)

1. How responsible do you think the personal trainer is for the service outcome?

2. How accountable do you think the personal trainer is for the service outcome?

3. How in control do you think the personal trainer is for the service outcome?

Relationship Norm (Aggarwal 2004; Yin et al. 2020), \(\alpha\)= (0.72)

Communal Relationship, \(\alpha\)= (0.82)

1. I am concerned about other people’s welfare

2. I help other people without expecting anything in return

3. I have warm feelings toward other people

4. I do not promptly expect anything in return from those who benefit from me

Exchange Relationship, \(\alpha\) = (0.96)

1. whenever I give or offer other people something, I expect something in return

2. whenever I give or offer other people something, I expect comparable benefits in return

3. I tend to behave like a trader

4. whenever I give or offer others something, I expect a quick return

Negative Word-Of-Mouth Intention (Wangenheim 2005), \(\alpha\) = 0.80 (0.79)

1. I intend to spread negative word-of-mouth about this personal trainer

2. I intend to denigrate this personal trainer to my friends

3. I intend to tell my friend to avoid this trainer when my friends look for a personal trainer

aManipulation check items of provider attribution of service failure; anchored by 1 = lack of effort and 7 = lack of talent. The Cronbach’s alpha values without parentheses were calculated in Study 1 while those with parentheses were calculated in Study 2.

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Park, S., Lee, HW. & Nite, C. Underscoring trainer's lack of effort or talent in service failure of personal fitness training: customers' negative word-of-mouth response. Serv Bus 17, 1025–1050 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-023-00544-w

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