Service Failure, Psychological Contract Violation and Formation of Customer Relationship Crisis—An Empirical Research of the OCT Theme Park

Abstract

An increasing amount of tourism enterprises are regarding customer relation crisis management as the core content of customer relationship management, while customer psychological contract during a serving course is the foundation of customer relationship management. According to analysis of relevant literatures, product defect and service failure are fundamental factors inducing customer relationship crisis in a tourism enterprise. Upon the basis, the paper presented that psychological contract violation was a promoting factor deepening customer relationship crisis, and raised relevant hypotheses. A structural equation model was utilized to test the action effect of psychological contract violation on customer relationship crisis. The research indicates that, after occurrence of product defect or service failure, psychological contract violation in a customer aggravates customer relationship crisis. Therefore, a tourism enterprise shall boost emotional relations with a customer during a serving course, enhance customer’s trust, and establish a favorable psychological contract to resolve customer relationship crisis.