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Article information:
To cite this document: Dominic Elliott, Kim Harris, Steve Baron, (2005),"Crisis management and services marketing", Journal of
Services Marketing, Vol. 19 Iss: 5 pp. 336 - 345
Permanent link to this document:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/08876040510609943
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References: This document contains references to 88 other documents
Citations: This document has been cited by 2 other documents
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Introduction
In July 2003, an unofficial strike by British Airways (BA)
check-in staff at Londons Heathrow airport resulted in BA
cancelling hundreds of flights during one of the busiest
weekends of the year. This stranded thousands of passengers
and took days to clear. Even when passengers were eventually
able to fly, their baggage was often missing and/or delayed.
From the perspectives of the passengers concerned, each and
every one of them experienced (sometimes several) failures
with BAs service provision. From the perspective of the
service organisation, it was a very costly crisis, during
which, in addition to receiving worldwide negative publicity,
BA shares dropped more than 5 per cent, and the company
had to pull a multi-million pound advertising campaign that
was planning to show flight delays and empty check-in desks
at rival airlines (USA Today, 2003). Service organisations, in
both the private and public sector, experience crises that
attract negative, often worldwide publicity. The cumulative
impact of service failures may result in crisis, however, in the
main, service failures are researched within the field of
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336
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Key issues
References
Pre-crisis of management
Ms Seaborn, 35, from Heywood in Greater Manchester, said she came down
with the bug on Monday after staff took her passport to stop her leaving the
ship and flying home from Gibraltar. It was an absolute nightmare. We were
held hostage. We got a clean bill of health from the doctor, but they wouldnt
let us off or give us our passports. A P&O executive said they would only give
them to us after we set sail from Gibraltar. I am suing them for kidnap they
didnt need to keep us on the ship did they? (bbc.co.uk, 2003c).
Sometimes you would hardly know there is anybody about you dont see a
soul which is most unusual. The atmosphere is a combination of gloom and
worry (passenger Sheila Elton cited in bbc.co.uk, 2003a).
They are sterilising cabins, people with masks are cleaning everywhere the
crew are doing everything they can (passenger Sheila Haigh cited in
bbc.co.uk, 2003a).
This year I have been on Oceana, Oriana and just recently Aurora. I can only
put the blame down to some passengers where they dont wash their hands
after going to the bathroom, then proceed back into the restaurant or other
food areas (Ray Prichard, UK, cited in bbc.co.uk, 2003b).
Not on Aurora, but came off Oceana 24/10/2003. The ship tried their very
best to look after us including issuing disinfected hand wipes as we went into
to buffet. However, there were passengers who felt this was beneath them
and waved them aside. With this sort of arrogance how can ships protect
their passengers? People should think of others and not show off (Lyndsay
Piper, England, cited in bbc.co.uk, 2003a).
Customer-to-customer interactions
In many service settings, a feature of customer participation,
highlighted by the servuction system, is the opportunity for
customers to interact with each other during service
encounters. Customers are often in a position to talk on-site
with other customers and to help, advise or abuse them.
Customer roles have been identified in customer-to-customer
interactions that reflect generally altruistic motives for the
interactions, and that result in mutual help. McGrath and
Otnes (1995) identified customers adopting the roles of
proactive helper, reactive helper and helpseeker in their
interactions with other shoppers in a US retail store
environment. Empirical research undertaken in the UK
provided additional evidence of these roles being played in
retail (Harris et al., 1999), leisure (Parker and Ward, 2000)
and transport (Harris and Baron, 2004) services. These
studies sought to draw attention to the fact that customers
can, and frequently do act positively to other customers, and
their ability and willingness to share knowledge and offer
advice to other customers can represent an effective,
additional human resource to a service organisation.
The study by Harris and Baron (2004) an ethnography of
a UK rail passenger service examined customer-tocustomer conversations in a service industry characterised
by high levels of customer dissatisfaction. Customers
responded to high levels of customer dissatisfaction in a
were all in it together, so lets make the best of it manner,
rather than with jaycustomer behaviours. Indeed, the
customer-to-customer conversations were having a
stabilising impact on customer expectations and perceptions
Managerial implications
There are extremely serious consequences for service
organisations that have a crisis. For many, it means going
out of business completely. The implications outlined in this
section represent an initial attempt to bring issues, raised
through an interdisciplinary approach to service business
crisis management, to management attention.
Implications for services marketers
If service organisations wish to reduce the chances of crisis
incubation, the earlier discussion suggests a number of
directions to consider.
The collection of critical incident data on service failures,
from both customers and employees, has been found to yield
valuable information, and supports monitoring procedures.
However, rather than simply classifying incidents, there is
scope to examine incidents through a crisis management lens.
This would permit taking a historical/developmental
perspective on failures, thereby aiding our understanding of
the impact and significance of the cumulative effects of the
failures in relation to crisis incubation.
A key finding from crisis management research concerns
the notion of the crisis prone versus the crisis resilient
organisation (see Pauchant and Mitroff, 1988, 1992). Inward
looking, narcissistic organisations are more prone to crises,
342
References
Andreassen, T.W. (1999), What drives customer satisfaction
with complaint resolution?, Journal of Service Research,
Vol. 1, May, pp. 324-32.
Armistead, C.G., Clarke, G. and Stanley, P. (1996),
Managing Service Recovery, Cranfield School of
Management, Cranfield.
bbc.co.uk (2003a), Worst over on cruise ship, available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3233851.stm (accessed 13
November).
bbc.co.uk (2003b), Bug ship sparks border row, available
at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3235999.stm
bbc.co.uk (2003c), Bug ship passengers to sue, available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/dorset/
3246481.stm
Bendapudi, N. and Berry, L.L. (1997), Customer receptivity
to relationship marketing, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 73
No. 1, pp. 15-37.
Further reading
Rodie, R.A. (2002), Customer participation in services
production and delivery, in Swartz, T.A. and Iacobucci, D.
(Eds), Handbook of Services Marketing and Management,
Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 111-25.
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