The Research on the Impact of Service Failure Severity on Customer Service Failure Attribution in the Network Shopping

In recent years, the rapid development of electronic commerce in China has made online shopping one of the most important shopping ways. However, there are more and more service failures on online shopping, and complaints about them are increasing, which will hinder the development of e-commerce in China. After service failure occurring, customers are going to decide the parties who are responsible for the failure typically based on specific failure situation and personal experience, namely service failure attribution. A lot of research has discussed the effect of service failure attribution on service recovery, customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty, as well as consumer intent of sequent behavior. And yet, the research on service failure attribution process is relatively less. Based on the literatures, this paper examines the effect of failure severity on service failure attribution of locus, controllability, and the moderating role of customer relationship and social responsibility image. The results of this study suggest that: Severity of failure has a significantly positive effect on service failure attribution of locus, controllability; Customer relationship significantly moderates the influences of failure severity on service attribution of locus, controllability; Social responsibility image significantly moderates the influences of failure severity on service attribution of locus, controllability.