Question 15.31

15.31 The influences of transaction history and a thank you.

A service failure is defined as any service-related problem (real or perceived) that transpires during a customer’s experience with a firm. In the hotel industry, there is a high human component, so these sorts of failures commonly occur regardless of extensive training and established policies. As a result, hotel firms must learn to effectively react to these failures. One study investigated the relationship between a consumer’s transaction history (levels: long and short) and an employee’s statement of thanks (levels: yes and no) on a consumer’s repurchase intent.12 Each subject was randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups and asked to read some service failure/resolution scenarios and respond accordingly. Repurchase intent was measured using a 9-point scale. Here is a summary of the means:

Thank you
History No Yes
Short 5.69 6.80
Long 7.53 7.37
  1. Plot the means. Do you think there is an interaction? If yes, describe the interaction in terms of the two factors.
  2. Find the marginal means. Are they useful for understanding the results of this study? Explain your answer.

15.31

(a) There appears to be an interaction between history and statement of thanks. For consumers with a short history, the employee’s statement of thanks drastically increases the repurchase intent. For consumers with a long history, there is not much difference in repurchase intent whether or not a thanks was given. (b) Short: 6.245. Long: 7.45. No: 6.61. Yes: 7.085. The marginal mean for history is somewhat meaningful, as generally the long history consumers are more likely to repurchase. But the marginal mean for thank you is misleading, suggesting that generally “no thanks” is lower than “yes thanks,” but that is only true for the short history group.