| In the past,businesses and consumers always tend to avoid uncertainty,believing that uncertainty will bring negative effects.However,more and more scholars have proposed recently that proper use of uncertainty can bring unexpected positive utility,and consumers also enjoy the fun,surprise and other positive emotions brought by uncertainty.The current literature focuses on the role of uncertainty in promotion,but is less involved in the field of service failure and service recovery,and the influence of uncertainty on consumer forgiveness is not clear,and the existing research scenarios of service failure are relatively simple.Therefore,this paper focuses on the role of uncertainty in service recovery and focuses on the influence of uncertainty on consumer forgiveness.The service failure study scenario is set as a takeaway meal delivery delay.By taking advantage of the uncertainty of the delivery service itself,the betting game is set up(the longer the delay,the more reward will be obtained),and the customers are involved in the service recovery.Based on the stimulus-processing-response theory,cognitive evaluation theory,equity theory,and uncertainty exploitation theory,the study constructs the theory of "betting games"(with vs.None)--perceived trust,perceived anger--consumer forgiveness "theoretical model,introducing moderating focus types(facilitation vs.Defensive)as a moderating variable,and considering the impact of the degree of service failure on the study,as a control variable.Prior to the study,college students with rich experience in ordering food were first interviewed to determine appropriate situational materials.Preliminary experiments show that the effect of betting games on consumer forgiveness increases first and then decreases as the level of service failure increases.This is because when the service failure is too severe,betting games alone can no longer compensate for the strong negative results,and more precise service recovery strategies are needed.Combined with the conclusion of the preliminary experiment,the formal experiment will be conducted in the context of moderate service failure,which is also the most common situation faced by merchants in marketing practice,and has more research value.A total of 266 valid questionnaires were collected.SPSS26.0 software,Bootstrap method and two-factor analysis of variance were used for data processing.The following conclusions were drawn:(1)The setting of betting games(vs.None)can significantly increase consumers’ willingness to forgive.(2)Consumers’ perceived trust and perceived anger played a mediating role in the influence of betting games on consumer forgiveness.Specifically,betting games increased consumers’ trust in merchants.Secondly,both betting games and perceived trust cushioned the perceived anger caused by service failures,and the multiple paths worked together to increase consumers’ willingness to forgive.(3)Consumers with different moderated focus types have different receptivity to betting games,and accelerative moderated focus(vs.Defensive regulatory focus)has lower perceived anger and higher perceived trust,which makes consumers more willing to forgive.In the absence of a betting game,there was no significant difference in the willingness to forgive between promotive and defensive consumers.This paper expands the research perspective of uncertainty in the field of service recovery,which is different from previous studies that deliberately create uncertainty to play a positive role,and enriches the research content of uncertainty utilization.Through data analysis,this paper explores in detail the effect,internal explanation mechanism and boundary conditions of betting games on consumer forgiveness,which provides some guidance for merchants to make use of the uncertainty of products or services. |
