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Customer incivility is commonplace across service industries. Yet, there is little that is known about how uncivil customers affect employees. The purpose of this study is to examine how uncivil customer interactions affect employees’ cynicism, depersonalization and job performance.

Study 1 uses the qualitative critical incident technique to content analyze employee perceptions of customer incivility and how it affects their job performance. Study 2 uses a 2 (incivility frequency: high vs low) × 2 (co-worker support: high vs low) × 2 (service rule commitment: high vs low) quasi-experimental between-subjects design.

Results find that there is a significant interaction effect of customer incivility frequency, co-worker emotional support and service rule commitment on employee cynicism and depersonalization, which leads to decreased job performance and more harmful experiences to other customers.

The findings provide practical implications on the importance of managing customer incivility, providing co-worker support and how this affects employee attitudes and service they deliver to other customers.

The results build upon the incivility, co-worker support and service rule commitment literature, conservation of resources theory, as well as identifying key variables core to hospitality and tourism research: cynicism and depersonalization that provide important implications for actions of tourism and hospitality firms.

Loyalty programs are pervasive across service industries. However, the examination of cross-customer effects represents a critical gap in the loyalty literature. To address this gap, this research conducts two between-subjects experimental design studies to examine traditional versus endowed loyalty status earner attitudinal loyalty intention toward the company, switching intentions and perceived unfairness.

Study 1 conducts a 2 (self: earned vs endowed) × 2 (others: earned vs endowed) between-subjects experimental design on the direct effects of attitudinal loyalty intention toward the company and switching intentions. Study 2 builds upon these findings by examining the mediation effect of perceived unfairness on the attitudinal loyalty intention toward the company and switching intentions.

Results from Study 1 find that cross-customer comparisons exist, and traditional loyalty members have negative attitudinal loyalty intention toward the company and switching intentions when comparing their rewards to endowed earner rewards. Study 2 examines an airline context and finds that unfairness mediates the relationship.

The research builds upon the literature surrounding cross-customer comparisons, loyalty programs, equity theory and endowed status and discusses the unintended negative consequences related to endowed loyalty rewards on other customer intentions that have critical managerial implications.

Building on the first cross-national study that had demystified various assumptions about the worldwide use of shadow education two decades ago, we analyze data from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment to examine the cross-national pattern of the use of shadow education by families in 64 nations and use improved statistical estimation methods. Focusing on fee-paying out-of-school classes, we find a continued, and likely an intensified pattern of the cross-national use of shadow education in the contemporary world. Approximately about one-third of all 15-year-old students from 64 countries/economies across the world use this form of shadow education. Students of higher socioeconomic status, females, and students in urban areas and general programs are more likely to use fee-paying services, while families and students turn to these services to address academic deficiencies in general. In addition, students from poorer countries more extensively rely on shadow education than students from wealthier countries after controlling for other variables. Students in South-Eastern and Eastern Asian countries are more likely to pursue shadow education than their counterparts in many other regions. Implications of these findings for theories of education and society as well as for educational policy in relation to shadow education are discussed.

This study aims to examine the observing customer’s reactions, namely, gratitude, loyalty to the employee and tipping intention while observing other customer incivility during another customer service failure and the frontline employee’s emotional labor strategy.

A 2 (emotional labor strategy: deep acting vs surface acting) by 2 (service consumption criticality: high vs low) experiment is used to test the hypotheses.

The results reveal that observing an employee’s deep acting emotional labor (vs surface acting) leads to a greater level of gratitude among the affected customers and promotes their tipping and loyalty to the employee. However, there is no significant interaction effect of service consumption criticality and emotional labor strategy on customer gratitude.

This research builds upon the social servicescape, customer misbehavior and emotional labor literature by examining previously untested relationships.

In cases of other customer service failure, managers should effectively communicate to their employees how their emotional labor induces positive customer feedback. Currently, emotional labor is emphasized mostly regarding its negative effects on employees, but this research suggests that serving the recovery expectation of the affected customers, especially when it is served with authentic emotional displays, can promote increased tipping and loyalty behavior.

No research investigates customers’ emotional and behavioral reactions to employee emotional labor in the context of other customer service failure.

This paper aims to examine the underlying motivations, attitudes and behaviors of exaggerated review posters and readers by examining the effect of review valence, emotional expression and language complexity on perceived poster, website and firm trustworthiness and subsequent behavioral intentions.

This research uses a mixed-method approach using the qualitative critical incident technique (CIT) and quantitative experimental design. Study 1 uses CIT to examine exaggerated online reviews from the poster perspective where Study 2 uses CIT to examine readers’ perceptions of exaggerated reviews. Study 3 conducts a between-subjects experimental design examining the impact of valence (positive vs negative) × emotion (low vs high) × language (vague vs detailed) on trustworthiness and behavior intention.

Results of the two qualitative studies (Study 1 and 2) find posters and readers use language complexity and emotions in exaggerated reviews. The results from the quantitative experimental design study (Study 3) find that language style and emotions influence customer perceptions of poster, website and firm trustworthiness, which also mediates the relationship between the qualitative aspects of review text on behavioral intentions.

The findings provide multiple practical implications on the prevalence of exaggerated online reviews and the importance of language and emotion in determining customer perceptions and behavioral intentions.

By focusing on both readers and posters in exaggerated eWOM, specific motivations, emotions and language, this research contributes to the literature of online reviews, customer misbehavior, trustworthiness, language use and value co-destruction in online environments.

This study aims to use mixed methods to create a new conceptual framework to understand the unique characteristics of virtual tourism experiences (VTE), which has not been systemically examined.

Study 1 uses topic modeling with Latent Dirichlet Allocation to analyze 91,609 online reviews from the Airbnb Experience platform. Study 2 uses content analysis of open-ended qualitative responses from VTE customers. The two studies together are used to build a new conceptual model.

Building upon the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) model and the experience economy, results present a new conceptual model and identify VTE as unique in terms of Stimulus (education, entertainment, esthetics, escapism and connection), Organism (experiencing synchronicity, telepresence, participation and customization, emotion) and Response (evaluation and behavioral responses). Given the uniqueness of VTE, the new construct of the virtual servicescape is incorporated, recognizing the host, the focal customer and other customers, and the technology as the four main components.

The proposed framework can be used to guide the design, development, and evaluation of VTE, including identifying the key considerations, engagement within the ecosystem and providing guidance to hosts and operators.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that systematically explores VTE and proposes the theoretical framework to comprehensively understand this new form of experience in sharing economy by combining the unique aspects of the stimulus, organism, response and virtual servicescape.

The purpose of this study is to examine how customer race (Black vs White) influences the extent to which customers attribute an ambiguous service failure (i.e. subtle degradation of service) to discrimination and how perceived discrimination relates to customer anger and on-site coping behaviors (vindictive complaining, problem-solving complaining and avoidance). This study further investigated how customer race affects the strength of relationships among perceived discrimination, anger and these three coping behaviors.

This study used a video-based simulation in which participants watched a subtle service failure from the customer’s viewpoint before completing a survey. A total of 421 participants – 210 Blacks and 211 Whites – were recruited through Qualtrics. Multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was used to test hypotheses.

Compared with White customers, Black customers were more likely to attribute a service failure to discrimination and exhibited a stronger relationship between perceived discrimination and anger. In addition, increasing anger in White customers tended to lead to more active coping strategies (i.e. vindictive complaining, problem-solving complaining). For Black customers, increasing anger tended to lead to vindictive complaining at a similar level to White customers. However, the impact of anger on problem-solving complaining – known to be a more beneficial coping strategy – was stronger among White customers than among Black customers.

This study advances hospitality practitioners’ understanding of how customers respond on-site to a service failure that can be interpreted as discrimination. The varying effects of race on customer-coping behavior are also identified. In addition, this study offers practical advice to develop organizational strategies to dissuade customers from attributing service failure to discrimination and to respond effectively to customer-coping behaviors.

Complementing and extending past research documenting the prevalence and causes of racial discrimination in service settings, the present study advances prior work by developing and testing a comprehensive structural model linking race with coping responses via perceived discrimination and anger, and by exploring how race affects the strength of relationships among perceived discrimination, anger and coping strategies.

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