Attribution of causality following service failure on online retail platforms: The roles of governance structure and recurring failures

Online retail platforms are increasingly mediating customer–vendor interactions, yet research offers limited insight into how platform governance shapes service failure attribution, especially after recurring failures. Drawing on attribution theory, this paper examines how centralized versus diffused governance structures influence consumers’ attribution of causality to the platform after service failure and their responses to recurring failures. Study 1 analyzes customer reviews using computational text analysis and shows that customers recognize governance structures and attribute causality to the platform more often under centralized than diffused governance. Employing scenario-based experiments, Study 2 demonstrates that centralized (vs. diffused) governance leads to higher failure attribution to the platform. Finally, we show that attribution following single and recurring failures serially mediates the relationship between governance structure and repurchase intention after a recurring failure. Importantly, platform attribution exerts opposite effects across failure episodes: following a single failure and successful recovery, greater platform attribution increases repurchase intention by signaling platform accountability and resolution capability. However, following a recurring failure, greater platform attribution decreases repurchase intention because recurrence signals a stable, persistent cause and reduces attributional uncertainty.