The antecedents of brand switching, brand loyalty and verbal responses to service failure

This article focuses on consumer behavioral responses to service failure (brand switching, brand loyalty, voice and negative word-of-mouth). We first discuss factors that moderate the relative frequency of these responses before describing early evidence on the psychological mechanisms underlying these behaviors. We then report a study that utilized mental simulation to test the predictive power of service recovery cognitions, emotional responses and satisfaction as antecedents of behavioral responses to service failure. Our results reveal that consumer behavioral responses are primarily determined by emotions and by postconsumption satisfaction, with specific emotions predicting particular behaviors. Anger was a powerful predictor of verbal responses to service failure: high levels of anger induced more complaints and more negative word-of-mouth.