Module - 7: CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Why are the data that Jack has gathered qualitative in nature? 2. Describe the sampling technique that Jack used. Using the sampling techniques described in Chapter 13 and summarized in table 13.2 on page 254, which type technique do you think Jack used? Do you think the technique was appropriate? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Would another technique have been better? Explain your answers. 3. Describe the three steps in qualitative data analysis (data reducton, data display, and the drawing of conclusions) on the basis of Jack's study. 4. Jack has not paid any attenton to the reliability and validity of his results in the first draft of his study. a. Discuss reliability and validity in qualitative research. b. Describe how Jack could have paid attention to the reliability and validity of his findings. 5. Please categorize the following three responses into Jack's classificaton system. It is possible that you experienced several emotons at that moment. Which emoton did you feel the strongest? ____I was angry___________________________ How intense did you experience this emoton? Not intense at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very Intense Did you experience any other emotons because of this event? If you did, which emotons and to what extent? Not intense at all ____Disappointment__________________ Very Intense 1 2 3 4 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 Page 1 of 3 5 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 It is possible that you experienced several emotons at that moment. Which emoton did you feel the strongest? _____I was blind with rage.___________________ How intense did you experience this emoton? Not intense at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very Intense Did you experience any other emotons because of this event? If you did, which emotons and to what extent? Not intense at all _____It was NOT fair_______________ 1 Very Intense 2 _____Fed up with these people!!!________ 3 1 4 2 5 3 4 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 5 It is possible that you experienced several emotons at that moment. Which emoton did you feel the strongest? __Unhappy______________________ How intense did you experience this emoton? Not intense at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very Intense Did you experience any other emotons because of this event? If you did, which emotons and to what extent? Page 2 of 3 Not intense at all _There was nothing I could do.___________ Very Intense 1 2 3 4 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 ________________________________ 1 2 3 4 5 Page 3 of 3 5 Roger Bougie 2011 CASE CHAPTER 16: QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS THE PREVALENCE OF ANGER IN SERVICE CONSUMPTION SETTINGS Jack O'Brien is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. Jack is working on a PhD thesis on the role of negative emotions, and more specifically the emotion anger, in service consumption settings. Jack's dissertation aims to supply service providers with knowledge to prevent anger and to adequately deal with customers experiencing anger, both on a strategic and operational level. On a strategic level, his dissertation will support service firms with respect to decision-making and services marketing management. On an operational level, it will first and foremost offer service providers information for avoiding customer anger and dealing with angry customers. To emphasize the practical relevance of his work, Jack and his supervisor have agreed to undertake an exploratory, qualitative study into the prevalence of customer anger. Jack has carried out this study last month. Recently, he has been writing up a first draft of this research project: The Prevalence of Anger in Services - FIRST DRAFT - Jack O'Brien Customers may experience a wide range of emotions in response to a service encounter. Previous research has mentioned joy, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, disappointment, anger, contempt, fear, shame, and regret, to name only a few (Nyer, 1999; Westbrook, 1987; Zeelenberg and Pieters, 1999; 2004). One of these emotions, anger, has profound effects on customers' behavioral responses to failed service encounters, such as switching and negative word-of-mouth communication (Bougie, Zeelenberg, and Pieters, 2003; Gregoire and Fisher, 2008 ; Gregoire, Laufer, and Tripp, 2010, Nyer, 1999; Taylor, 1994). In turn, switching and negative word-of-mouth communication (directly or indirectly) affect the profitability of service firms. Hence, the basic emotion research finding that anger is also a common emotion - experienced by most of us anywhere from several times a day to several times a week (Averill, 1982) - suggests that anger may have a strong impact on the profitability and performance of service firms. However, the afore-mentioned findings on the prevalence of anger do not necessarily apply to service consumption settings. For instance, Averill shows that the most common target of anger is a loved one or a friend: "anger at others, such as strangers and those whom we dislike is not usual" (1982, p. 169). Averill provides a number of possible reasons for this finding, such as increased chances that a provocation will occur, a stronger motivation to get loved ones to change their ways, the more cumulative and distressing nature of provocations committed by loved ones, the tendency Roger Bougie 2011 to give strangers the benefit of the doubt, and the tendency to avoid those who we dislike. It is therefore unclear whether anger is frequently experienced in service settings. This study aims to fill this gap in our knowledge by investigating whether anger is commonly experienced in response to failed service encounters. The results of this study provide increased insights into the prevalence of anger in services and thus into the effects of customer anger on the profitability and performance of service firms. Method Procedure. The critical incident technique (CIT) was used as a method. Flanagan (1954) defines the CIT as 'a set of procedures for collecting direct observations of human behavior in such a way as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles'. It involves several steps, including the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data. Critical incidents were collected by research assistants, who were carefully trained to gather the data. They were encouraged to accumulate data from 100 participants using convenience sampling. In order to obtain a sample representative of customers of service organizations, they were instructed to collect data from a wide variety of people. Participants were asked to record their critical incidents on a standardized form. Participants. One hundred and eighteen persons were approached to participate in this study. Fourteen persons indicated that they were either unwilling or unable to participate and four questionnaires were eliminated because of incompleteness. Eventually, 60 men and 40 women, ranging in age from 16 to 95, with a median age of 27, stayed in the sample: 3% of them had less than a high school education, whereas 25% had at least a bachelor's degree. Questionnaire. The first question asked participants to indicate which of 29 different services they had purchased during the previous six-month period. This question was asked to reduce participants' uncertainty regarding what was meant by services and to check whether participants had purchased services during the last six months (cf., Keaveney, 1995). Then, participants were asked to recall the last negative experience with a service provider and to bring back as much of the actual experience as they possibly could. They were asked to describe this experience in an open ended format. Next, participants were asked to indicate if they experienced any emotions as a result of the negative experience with the service provider. Then they were asked which emotions they experienced as a result of the service failure by means of open-ended questions. The open-ended questions were "It is possible that you experienced several emotion did you feel the strongest?" emotions at that moment. Which Roger Bougie 2011 Subsequently, a closed-ended question was asked about the intensity of the reported emotion. The question "How intense did you experience this emotion?" was answered on a five point scale with end-points labeled not intense at all (1) and very intense (5). Finally, participants were asked whether they had experienced any other emotions because of this event, and if they had,which emotions (open-ended question) and to what extent (closed-ended question). Data categorization. A classification based on the results of a taxonomic study of the vocabulary of emotions by Storm and Storm (1987) was used to categorize the results of this study. This particular taxonomy was chosen because Storm and Storm used a rigorous system to classify a large number of emotion terms into an adequate and comprehensive number of categories and subcategories: first, they used a sorting task and hierarchical clustering to identify a preliminary set of categories; then they expanded the words to be classified into these categories by asking various groups of participants to supply words related to feelings; and finally, four expert judges sorted the larger collection of words into categories. The result was a taxonomy that contains 525 different emotion terms distributed among seven categories and twenty subcategories. The categories include three negative emotion categories, two positive emotion categories, cognitive states or physical conditions. Subcategories anger, hostility, disgust, love, liking, and two categories referring to include shame, sadness, pain, anxiety, contentment, happiness, pride, sleepy, fear, apathetic, contemplative, arousal, interest, surprise, and understanding. Results Negative service experiences. The participants of this study reported a wide variety of negative service experiences. Reported service failures fell in the categories of personal transportation airplane, taxi, or train), banking and insurance, entertainment, hospitality, and restaurants, stores, hospitals, physicians, and dentists, (by (virtual) repair and utility services,(local) government and the police, education, telecommunication companies, health clubs, contracting firms, hairdressers, real estate agents, driving schools and travel agencies. On average, the negative events that participants reported had happened 9.5 weeks before. Experienced emotions. The aim of this study was to investigate whether anger is commonly experienced in response to failed service encounters. The participants of this study experienced a broad range of negative emotions in response to a failed service encounter. The emotion terms customers provided were classified into seven categories: anger, sadness, hatred, anxiety, disgust, fear, and pain. Other terms that were mentioned were classified into four additional categories provided by the classification of Storm and Storm (1987): general negative terms, positive terms with interpersonal reference, terms related to passivity, and terms related to activity. Finally, two Roger Bougie 2011 additional categories, appraisals, and a category labeled 'other terms' were included to classify terms that did not tie in with the classification scheme of Storm and Storm. On average, the participants provided 1.78 emotion terms: 5 participants experienced four emotions; 10 participants experienced three emotions; 43 participants experienced two emotions; and 42 participants experienced one emotion. Table 1provides an overview of the results of this study. Negative terms related to anger were mentioned most ohen. Anger terms were mentioned 95 times, corresponding to 53.37% of all items. Eighty-two percent of the participants mentioned a negative term related to anger (either as the most intensely experienced emotion or as the second-, third-, or fourth-strongest emotion). Sixty-nine percent of the participants mentioned a negative term related to anger as the most intense emotion. The specified anger terms include 'Angry', 'Rage', 'Irritated', 'Annoyed', 'Frustrated', 'Fed up','Indignant', and 'Grumpy'. The second largest category is appraisals; cognitions antecedents of emotions. Participants mentioned three different associated with the perceived appraisals, 'powerless', 'unfair', and 'responsible'. Note that prior research associates the appraisal 'unfair' with anger, whereas 'powerless' is associated with both anger and sadness (Ruth et al., 2002; Shaver et al.,1987). The third largest cluster is 'Negative terms related to Sadness.' Sadness terms were mentioned 24 times by 21participants. This category includes the emotion terms 'Sad', 'Rejected', 'Disappointed', 'Despair', 'Dejected', and 'Useless'. Other categories are considerably smaller than the afore-mentioned categories. Besides the afore-mentioned appraisals, eight further 'emotion' terms that the participants of this study provided did not fit the taxonomy of Storm and Storm (1987). As customers employed a rather broad definition of emotion, the emotion terms they provided included mood states, action tendencies, and opinions about the event and/or the service provider. These terms were categorized as 'Other terms'. Multiple emotions. Fihy-eight participants mentioned more than one term: however, only 17 of them experienced multiple emotions. Anger and sadness were experienced most often in combination (14 times), followed by anger and fear (2 times) and fear and sadness (1time). Intensity of emotions. On a five-point scale, ranging from not intense at all (1) to very intense (5), the mean rating of the strongest emotion was 3.97. Moreover, the large majority of the responses (84%) fell above the midpoint of the scale. This suggests that the participants of this study did not report incidents that they considered trivial or inconsequential. Roger Bougie 2011 Table 1: Customers' Emotions in Response to Failed Service Encounters Negative terms related to Anger Anger Rage Irritated Annoyed Frustrated Fed up Indignant Grumpy Appraisals Powerless Unfair Responsible Negative terms related to Sadness Sadness Disappointed Rejected Despair Dejected Useless Terms related to Activity Excited Surprise Amazement Disbeilef Perplexed Negative terms related to Hatred Hatred Aggression Distrust General negative terms Rotten Negative terms related to Anxiety Upset Terms related to Passivity Indifference Positive terms with interpersonal reference Acceptance Pity Negative terms related to Disgust Disrespect Negative terms related to Fear Fear Negative terms related to Pain Pain Others Terms Claustrophobic Ridiculous Felt like crying Unreasonable Dull Stress Discriminated Strongest 2" strongest 3' strongest emotion emotion emotion 30 13 8 8 2 1 15 2 2 1 3 1 1 4 strongest emotion 1 2 5 1 13 5 2 1 1 1 1 9 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Note. The numbers in the second, third, fourth, and fifth column refer to how many times a specific emotion term was mentioned as respectively the strongest, second-strongest, third-strongest, or fourth-strongest emotion. A dash indicates that this emotion was not mentioned (as for instance the strongest emotion). Roger Bougie 2011 Discussion The results of this study demonstrate that consumers experience a broad range of negative emotions in response to a failed service encounter. Anger was by far the most frequently experienced emotion; 82% of the participants experienced anger in response to the most recently experienced failed service encounter. This suggests that anger is a common emotion in response to failed service encounters. Because the results of this study provide additional contention that customer anger has a powerful support for the impact on the profitability and performance of service firms, this study calls for more research on the nature of customer anger. 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