A comprehensive classification of services failures based on intentionality and duration of failures: 10th SERVSIG Conference

There have been growing number of complaints about airlines intentionally overbooking their flights in order to maximise their profit. For example, here is a quote by a passenger who missed his brother’s wedding as a result of an airline overbooking “There is no amount of money you can offer to make up for missing my brother’s wedding. It was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities and I missed it, with no good reason/excuse and no real attempt to make things right from United Airlines. Honestly, the $400 offer was a slap in the face and insulting” (Flyertalk.com). The issue has become very common and in the US alone, each year over half a million passengers are affected (Powley, 2017), while the number is around 50,000 passengers in the UK (Leach, 2017). Intentional service failures affect hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. Yet, with the exception of a study by Varela-Neira et al. (2014), there is a lack of research on intentional service failures. In addition, there are lack of research on failures which are not reversible (Roschk and Gelbrich, 2014) and the damages to the customer would be permanent. Given the intensity of customers’ reactions to extreme forms of intentional and permanent service failures, the existing typologies of service failure along with corresponding service recovery strategies may not be suitable.