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The Effect of Group Polarization on Complaint
Intention in Service Failure Encounters
Abstract
Group service failure events have been frequently observed nowadays. However, there is scant
research in group service failure. Through four experiments, we show that during group service
failure, (1) group polarization occurs among group customers after group discussion, i.e., group
complaint intention is greater than individual complaint intention in a service failure involving a
single customer; (2) group polarization occurs for group customers with higher levels of
complaint intentions after group discussion, and it amplifies as group size increases. This
result does not hold for group customers with lower levels of complaint intentions; (3) an
informal leader of group customers guides the direction of group polarization; (4) if the minority
of group customers express their opinion clearly and confidently (i.e., complain or not to
complain), it will guide the direction of group polarization.
Keywords: Group polarization, group service failure, complaint intention, informal leader,
minority
Introduction
Since service systems inherently have high degree of openness and customer contact,
service failure is likely to occur during service process. This in turn will result in customer
complaints, which have been commonly observed in practice, even for companies with good
management (Grönroos, 1984; Lovelock, 1983). In this paper, we are particularly concerned
with some typical service industries, which involves tens or hundreds of customers receiving
services in the same place and at the same time (e.g., the restaurant, tourism, bank, airline
industry), or sometimes even thousands of customers (e.g., the concert, sports industry).
Prior literature in service failure and recovery mainly takes the perspective of an individual
customer (Maxham and Netemeyer 2002; Hocutt, Chakraborty and Mowen 1997). There is a
scarce of research that investigates group customers’ emotions and behaviors during service
failure encounters. When service failure involves a group of customers, social influence and
interactions within the group will further stimulate an individual customer’s perceived control
and antagonism. It is plausible to conjecture that customer complaint intention during service
failure involving group customers would be quite different from that during service failure
involving only an individual customer. Therefore, in this study, we seek to address research
questions as follows. First, during service failure in terms of the same degree of severity, is
customer complaint intention stronger in a group service failure than that in an individual service
failure? Second, is it possible that group complaint intention polarize to two extreme directions
in a group service failure? Does it amplify as group size increases? Third, during a group
service failure, one or several leaders may stand out of the group spontaneously, who usually
have high prestige among the customers. Can they lead group complaint intention to
polarization? Fourth, does the minority’s attitude influence group complaint intention in a
group service failure?
Group Polarization Under Group Service failure
Group polarization traced back to the research on risk shift. For example, Stone (1961)
designed some decision dilemma scenarios and asked subjects to indicate the degree to which
the imaginary figures in the scenarios would undertake the risk. Then, subjects were divided
into several groups for discussion with five people in each group. Through group discussion,
group subjects’ opinions converged. More interestingly, the group’s converged opinion tended
to be more risk seeking than subjects’ original opinions.
The group polarization effect has received substantial laboratory evidence in a variety of
situations, such as gambles and adventures, ethical issues, personal perceptions, simulation of
court decisions, judgments of problems with ambiguous facts, etc. (Lamm and Myers, 1978;
Myers and Lamm, 1976).
We are interested in whether the group polarization phenomenon occurs among a group of
customers in the context of a group service failure. Since service failure hurts the rights of
almost all group customers, they are likely to produce a common complaint objective. This in
turn will stimulate strong interactions among group customers when they negotiate with the
service provider to deal with the service failure. The previous research suggested that group
attitude polarization is easier to occur in a common fate group (Kagan and Carlson, 1969) or a
group with high similarity (Zaleska, 1978). Thus, during a group service failure, group
customers possess the essential characteristics for group polarization to occur. Furthermore,
Norris et al. (1977) showed that it is more likely for a group of people to take antagonistic
actions after they dispute about the brutality of policemen with each other.
For a fairly serious group service failure, customers tend to have higher levels of complain
intentions and thus form a group of customers with homogeneous attitudes. As a result,
through group discussion, group complaint intention will shift to risk. Therefore, we suggest
the following hypothesis:
H1: Group complaint intention is greater than individual complaint intention, i.e., group
customers with homogeneous attitudes are more risky.
Two classic theories have been used to explain the occurrence of group polarization
(Isenberg, 1986). The first explanatory mechanism for group polarization is the social
comparison theory (SCT) (e.g., Brown 1974; Myers 1978; Myers, Bruggink, Kersting, and
Schlosser 1980; Myers, Wojcicki, and Aardema 1977). The second explanatory mechanism for
group polarization is the informational influence theory (Anderson & Graesser, 1976; Bishop &
Myers, 1974; Kaplan, 1977: Kaplan & Miller, 1977; Madsen, 1978).
We next discuss about the effect of the two different mechanisms above (i.e., informational
influence and normative influence) on the process of group polarization during a group service
failure. First, at the orientation stage, the decision faced by group customers is whether to raise
complaints to the service provider. As Laughlin (1996) pointed out, the decision involves both
intellectual and judgmental questions. Regarding intellectual questions, for instance, customers
need to obtain sufficient information related to service failure to evaluate the necessity of
complaints and the chance of successful complaints. By contrast, with respect to judgmental
questions, usually there is no clear answer to the questions, such as whether to complain finally.
To answer judgmental questions, it requires group customers’ subjective judgments. Next,
group customers enter the discussion stage. At this stage, group customers interact with each
other about their own experience and feelings of service failure, and then identify and evaluate
potential complaint alternatives. Apparently, questions of this stage emphasize more on the
intellectual dimension. Thus, informational influence plays a key role at this stage. However,
the information accumulates quickly within the group as time evolves. In addition, since the
information is likely to be mixed and inconsistent, group customers usually can not persuade
each other. But the group has to make a decision due to the limit of time. Therefore, at the
decision stage, group customers tend to follow the mainstream opinion of the group. That is,
the social comparison process starts to influence group decisions at this stage. Consequently,
group norm guides the direction of group decision and eventually forces the group to make
extremized decisions.
Furthermore, Janis (1982) suggested that when faced with high degree of pressure and
danger, a group of people prefers decision speed to decision accuracy. During a group service
failure, group customers’ rights are harmed and they are faced with high pressure of decisions.
They usually make quick decisions, while ignore to conduct detailed analysis of the information
available. As a result, the process of informational influence is weakened, and the social
comparison process plays a more important role in quick decisions. Kelly et al. (1997) also
pointed out that once a group has to make quick decisions, group members tend to only process
superficial or heuristic information (Karau and Kelly, 1992). Under this situation, no matter
whether a task is intellectual or judgmental, group members depend on normative influence to
make their decisions. Hence, normative influence is more effective in the process of group
polarization during group discussion in service failure. Therefore, we suggest the following
hypothesis;
H2: During group discussion in service failure, normative influence has a greater effect on
group complaint intention than informational influence.
To test the hypotheses, we conduct four consecutive experiments. Specifically, in
experiments 1 and 2, we examine the fundamental effects of group polarization in the context of
a group service failure (i.e., hypotheses 1 and 2) by stimulating group customers with
homogenous attitudes. In experiments 3 and 4, we explore the influence of leaders and the
minority on group polarization (i.e., hypotheses 3 and 4 proposed in later sections) by
constructing group customers with heterogonous attitudes. For the four experiments, all of the
subjects were undergraduate students.
Experiment 1
Procedure
Sixty-six undergraduate students at a prestigious university of China participated in this
experiment, with 31 male and 35 female. The detailed experiment procedure is depicted in
Figure 2 below. Specifically, we are interested in examining the dynamic change in customer
complaint intention at three different times, denoted as T1 (before group discussion), T2 (right
after group discussion), and T3 (right after group decision). Accordingly, we name the
individual complaint intention at T1, T2, and group complaint intention at T3 to be CI1, CI2 and
CI3, respectively.
Outset 5 minutes
Individual
Complaint
Intention
(CI1)
Individual Test T1
10 minutes
Individual
Complaint
Intention
(CI2)
Group Discussion
5 minutes
Group
Complaint
Intention
(CI3)
T2 Group Decision T3
Figure 2. An Illustration of the Procedure of Experiment 1
Results
The average complaint intention of an individual participant was 73.6 at T1. By contrast,
after group decision, the average complaint intention of group participants increased to be 87.5 at
T3, which was significant greater than that of an individual participant (t = 4.193, p < .001).
Thus, Hypothesis 1 is supported.
In addition, after group discussion, the average complaint intention of an individual
participant went up to 78.0 at T2. However, the change was not significant compared to the
complaint intention at T1 (t = 1.701, p = .094). On the other hand, as presented above, the
increase in the complaint intention was significant between T1 and T3. This suggests that
normative influence in group decision plays a more important role in group polarization.
Therefore, we provide empirical support for Hypothesis 2.
Experiment 2
During group discussion, the difference between group norm and individual attitude causes
the individual to receive the psychological contagion by the other group members. As a result,
group members continue to move towards this direction and ultimately reach an extremed
opinion. Therefore, in the context of service failure, group polarization could shift to either risk,
or caution. We suggest the following hypothesis:
H3: During service failure, group customers with homogenous attitudes lead to group
polarization through group discussion. Specifically, after group discussion, group customers
with higher (lower) levels of complaint intentions will significantly increase (decrease) their
complaint intentions.
With information exchange and social interactions, scattered small groups would merge into
a large size group. Thus, as small size groups merge together into a large group, customers
would more firmly stick to their previous opinions. Therefore, we conjecture that during
service failure, the larger a group is, the stronger is the interaction among group customers and
thus the group polarization effect. We suggest the following hypothesis:
H4: During service failure, the group polarization effect amplifies as the group size
increases for group customers with homogenous attitudes. That is, a larger group size leads to
stronger (weaker) group polarization effect.
Procedure
We recruited 130 undergraduate students at a prestigious university of China to participate
in this experiment. Among them, 59 were male students and 71 were female ones.
Figure 3 shows the detailed procedure of experiment 2. In this experiment, we are
interested in examining the dynamic change in customer complaint intention at four different
times, denoted as T1 (before the smaller group discussion), T2 (right after the smaller group
discussion), T3 (right after the smaller group decision), T4 (right after the larger group
discussion), and T5 (right after the larger group decision). Accordingly, we name the individual
complaint intention at T1, T2, T4, and group complaint intention at T3 and T5 to be CI1, CI2,
CI4, and CI3, CI5, respectively.
Individual
Individual
Group
Individual
Group
Complaint
Complaint
Complaint
Complaint Complaint
Intention
Intention
Intention
Intention
Intention
(CI1)
(CI2)
(CI3)
(CI4)
(CI5)
Outset
10
minutes
5
minutes
10
minutes
5 minutes
5 minutes
Individual T1
Test
Smaller T2 Smaller T3
Group
Group
Discussion
Decision
T4 Larger T5
Larger
Group
Group
Discussion
Decision
Figure 3 An Illustration of the Procedure of Experiment 2
Results
In this experiment, we examined customer complaint intention at five different times, i.e.,
individual complaint intention at T1, T2 and T4, and group complaint intention at T3 and T5.
From Figure 5, we can see that for customers with lower levels of complaint intentions, their
average complaint intentions changed slightly over time, i.e., there was no significant change in
customer complaint intention from the beginning to the end of the experiment. Thus, for
customers with lower levels of complaint intentions, group polarization to caution did not occur.
Additionally, we did not find the effect of group size on group complaint intentions. In contrast,
for customers with higher levels of complaint intentions, their complaint intentions increased
significantly at T3 and T5. As a result, we provided empirical evidence for the effect of group
polarization to risk and the amplifying effect group polarization with respect to group size.
Finally, we found that the group polarization effect was not significant at the stage of group
discussion, but it played a critical role at the stage of group decision. This is consistent with
Hypothesis 2.
Experiment 3
During a service failure, when there are conflicting opinions among group customers, an
informal leader is likely to appear spontaneously and influence the behaviors of other group
members. Thus, we suggest the following hypothesis.
H5: During serviced failure, a leader of group customers with inhomogeneous attitudes
guides the process of group discussion. The leader’s intention of complaining (not complaining)
leads to higher levels of group intention of complaining (not complaining) after group decision.
Procedure
Sixty-eight undergraduate students (i.e., 32 male and 36 female) at a prestigious university
of China participated in this experiment for partial course credit. Figure 4 illustrates the
detailed procedure of experiment 3. In this experiment, we are interested in examining the
dynamic change in customer complaint intention at three different times, denoted as T1 (right
after the individual test), T2 (right after the group discussion), and T3 (right after the group
decision). Accordingly, we name the individual complaint intention at T1, T2, and T3 to be CI1,
CI2, and CI3, respectively.
Individual Each Group
Individual
Group
Elected
An
Complaint
Complaint Complaint
Informal
Intention
Intention
Intention
Outset
Leader
(CI1)
(CI2)
(CI3)
5 minutes
10 minutes
5 minutes
5 minutes
Individual T1
Test
T2 Group T3
Group
Discussion
Decision
Figure 4. The Procedure of Experiment 3
Results
In this experiment, we examined customer complaint intention at three different times, i.e.,
individual complaint intention at T1, T2, and group complaint intention at T3. The results
provided empirical support for the effect of group leaders on the direction of group polarization.
Experiment 4
Wood et al. (1994) suggested that the minority usually echoes the majority’s views due to
the conventional wisdom that the truth is held by the majority (i.e., informational influence), or
the concern that the minority hopes to get accepted by the majority (i.e., normative influence).
Mugny and Perez (1991) argued that the minority often receives negative evaluations, and thus it
is not easy for other group members to understand and accept their views. If the minority of
group members insists not to follow the group decision, it will cause a great deal of pain to them
(Levine 1989). Bassili (2003) found that the minority usually shows minority slowness effect,
i.e., the minority tends to express their views more slowly than the majority does. In addition,
sometimes the minority also receives pressure from the majority. Consequently, the minority’s
view disappears under the presence of the majority’s view.
Therefore, during service failure, if the minority of group customers express their opinion
clearly and confidently (i.e., complain or not to complain), it will guide the direction of group
polarization. Specifically, we suggest the following hypotheses:
H6. For group customers with inhomogeneous opinions during service failure, when the
minority does not express their opinion clearly and confidently, their opinion will be dominated
by the majority’s opinion. Consequently, group decision will polarize to the majority’s opinion.
H7. For group customers with inhomogeneous opinions during service failure, when the
minority expresses their opinion clearly and confidently, it will increase the strength of the
minority’s opinion. Consequently, group decision will polarize to the minority’s opinion.
Procedure
One hundred undergraduate students (i.e., 46 male and 54 female) at a prestigious university
of China participated in this experiment for partial course credit.The detailed procedure of
experiment 4 is depicted in Figure 8. In this experiment, we are interested in examining the
dynamic change in customer complaint intention at three different times, denoted as T1 (right
after the individual test), T2 (right after the group discussion), and T3 (right after the group
decision). Accordingly, we name the individual complaint intention at T1, T2, and group
complaint intention at T3 to be CI1, CI2, and CI3, respectively.
Individual Attach Tags
Individual
Group
Complaint
Complaint Complaint
to Half of
Intention
Intention
Intention
the Minority
Outset
(CI1)
(CI2)
(CI3)
5
minutes
10
minutes
5 minutes
5 minutes
Individual T1
Test
T2 Group T3
Group
Discussion
Decision
Figure 5. The Procedure of Experiment 4
Results
In experiment four, we tested customer complaint intention at three different times, i.e.,
individual complaint intention at T1, and T2, and group complaint intention at T3. We provided
the empirical evidence for the effect of the minority’s opinion on group decision. Specifically,
the minority with tags (represented by squares) obviously guided the direction of group
polarization to their own opinion, whereas for the minority without tags (represented by
diamonds), their opinion was dominated by the majority’s opinion, which guided the direction of
group polarization.
Theoretical implications
First, From a theoretical perspective, it is novel to use the group polarization theory to
address group customers’ interactions after service failure. In the context of group service
failure, both experiments 1 and 2 provided empirical evidence that with respect to a group of
customers with homogeneous attitudes, group customers have higher levels of complaint
intentions than an individual customer, i.e., the group complaint intention is more risky relative
to the individual complaint intention.
Second, the results in experiments 3 and 4 showed that when the minority expresses their
attitude clearly and confidently, it will increase their efforts of persuading others, and thus group
decision tend to polarize to the minority’s opinion. On the contrary, when the minority does not
clearly and confidently express their attitude, it will be dominated by the majority’s opinion, and
in turn group decision will polarize to the majority’s opinion.
Third, Our study provided a comprehensive investigation of the process of group
polarization. Specifically, we collected customer complaint intentions several times during
each of the experiments. The results showed that among group customers with homogeneous
attitudes, group polarization does not occur at the stage of group discussion, but becomes
significant at the stage of group decision. In contrast, among group customers with
heterogeneous attitudes, group polarization to risk occurs at the stage of group discussion and is
reinforced at the stage of group decision, no matter whether there is an informal group leader or
the minority showing their attitudes clearly and firmly; whereas group polarization to caution can
occur at the stage of group discussion for the minority expressing their attitudes clearly and
firmly, but not for an informal group leader.
Practical implications
First, if a service failure encounter produces a group of customers with homogeneous
attitudes (i.e., nearly all the customers are not satisfied with the service failure and thus have
higher levels of complaint intentions), it could be dangerous to the service provider. Second, the
results of this study indicate that group polarization to caution does not occur without the
guidance of an informal group leader or the minority during the service failure. Thus, service
providers should never take service failure slightly even if it is trivial or its occurrence has an
acceptable reason.Third, we show that informal group leaders or the minority with firm attitude
can guide the direction of group polarization. Therefore, at the occurrence of group service
failure, service providers should calmly identify the informal group leader and the minority with
radical opinions.
Limitations and Future Research
This study has several limitations. First, the process of group polarization is very
complicated. Second, this study mainly uses statistical tests to examine differences between
groups. It would be interesting to compare differences in an individual customer’s perception
across different groups by using hierarchical linear model (HLM).
As group service failure occurs more and more frequently, it will receive much more
attention in the research of service marketing. First, It would be interesting to investigate the
influence of the cultural context on the results. Second, If an online group event is not
appropriately handled, it is likely to turn into an offline event and result in serious outcomes.
Mental processes of individuals who participate in online group disputes are different from those
who experience realistic onsite group events, which is left for future research.
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