DETERMINING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE INNOVATION: EXPLORING A DYNAMIC MODEL OF CUSTOMER RESPONSES IN NEGATIVE SERVICE ENCOUNTERS

Sa？etak Given a volatile business environment, enhancing customer experience has become a key resource that has transformed service innovation for business growth. While recent studies have investigated customer value co-creation, there is less knowledge about potential value co-destruction which is that customers respond to negative service encounters in vindictive and aggressive ways. This study aims to examine key triggers of customer negative emotions and propose human needs threat (HNT) as antecedents. This study has two stages. Firstly, the critical incident technique was used as the preliminary study. Secondly, empirical research involved the survey using online panels. Data from 318 respondents of various service contexts were analyzed through structural equation modeling. Finally, this study finds that HNT is a trigger for customer rage in service recovery failure. The findings highlight the challenges for service organizations in managing standards of customer service and ensuring that their employees, especially frontline employees, can monitor customers’ responses based on HNT. This study focuses on social psychology studies and examines that customer rage arises when individuals feel alienated and excluded in service recovery context as do in groups or in their personal relationships