A Study on Influence of Intimacy on Service Evaluation

Abstract

Although intimacy can be quite useful in understating the service evaluation of customers, it has hardly been studied in the field of marketing. Thus, this study explores how intimacy influences service evaluation of customers (satisfaction, repatronage intention, and recommendation intention) in the presence and absence of service failure. A scenario method using 2 (service failure vs. nonservice failure) X 2 (high intimacy vs. low intimacy) factorial designs is employed for this study. The findings reveal that an interaction effect exists between intimacy and service failure, indicating the existence of the betrayal effect in times of service failure/high intimacy situation. The implications of this research and directions for future research are discussed.