Online customer-to-customer (C2C) incivility: impacts of managerial responses in digital customer service settings

Purpose This research addressed online customer-to-customer (C2C) incivility during digital service recovery. Design/methodology/approach To examine the effectiveness of managerial responses to online C2C incivility post a restaurant service failure, a 2 (Managerial response: general vs specific) x 2 (Failure severity: high vs low) quasi-experimental design was employed. A pretest was conducted with 123 restaurant consumers via Amazon Mechanical Turk, followed by a main study with 174 restaurant consumers. Taking a mixed-method approach, this research first asked open-ended questions to explore how participants perceived the restaurant’s motivation for providing a generic versus a specific response. Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS procedure was then performed for hypotheses testing. Findings The results revealed significant interaction effects of managerial responses and failure severity on perceived online service climate and revisit intention, mediated by trust with managerial responses. Originality/value This research yielded unique insight into C2C incivility management literature and industry practices in the context of digital customer service recovery.