Coping, rumination, and electronic word-of-mouth: Segmenting consumer responses to service failure via fuzzy clustering

This study deploys a novel clustering algorithm to identify distinct segments of consumers based on the strategies they use to ‘cope’ with service failure. Drawing from different anger prototypes and felt intensity therein, it identifies how different consumer segments employ a diverse range of rumination behaviours in response to service failure, with this used to predict manifestations of eWOM. Individuals with experience of service failure within the Iranian hotel industry context were surveyed, with findings identifying four discrete consumer segments underpinned by varied combinations of active, expressive, and denial-based post-failure coping behaviours. Each distinct segment activated different rumination behaviours. Further, logit models demonstrate that three eWOM archetypes are driven by different predictors, suggesting that consumers’ online behaviours following service failure are heterogeneous and shaped by the coping strategy employed.