Abstract:
Each day people have a variety of consumption experiences ranging from excellent to poor. It is how individuals cope with the stressful and upsetting experiences that can influence their own well-being and how they feel about negative incidents. In contrast to previous research that investigated the impact of the consumers' communication on the receiver of this information, this research explores the impact of the same communication on the discloser; the person themselves. Studies in social psychology that have explored the impact of disclosure on the discloser in cases of negative incidents, have focussed exclusively on the way in which the person complaining, writes their story regarding the negative incident. Despite a long line of studies on the impact of the writing style, the findings are mixed regarding their effectiveness. This study instead proposes that the person to whom an individual discloses their negative incident will have a significant impact on the discloser's cognitions and emotions. This study develops a new concept, called 'disclosure closeness', that consists of the closeness between the discloser and receiver in the context of a disclosure situation; it takes into account past relationship closeness. This study argues that the disclosure closeness influences the way in which consumers feel about the service failure. The findings of this study showed that when consumers disclose and perceive the disclosure to be beneficial to them, they feel better about the service failure. The findings also provide support for disclosure closeness as an influencer of how the discloser feels about the incident, but the impact is less than hypothesised.
