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Seeking consumer forgiveness: face management by frontline employees

ABSTRACT The research paper is a pioneering effort to explore the concept of consumer forgiveness from the perspective of frontline employees (FLEs), specifically FLEs’ consumer forgiveness seeking behavior and their post-consumer forgiveness emotions, work attitudes and behavior. Consumer forgiveness seeking is conceptualized as a face management strategy adopted by FLEs to facilitate face restoration for consumers who suffered a loss of face due to deficiency in services provided by the FLEs, and for prevention of further face loss for FLEs who have faced consumer anger provoked by deficient services. Post-consumer forgiveness, FLEs experience positive emotions which have a constructive impact on their work attitudes and behavior. Consumer forgiveness seeking is revealed to be interwoven with power distance, the subjugation of self and mythical autonomy of FLEs. Qualitative research has been undertaken using the critical incident technique. Face negotiation theory provides the theoretical foundation for analyzing critical incidents collected from FLEs of banks, restaurants and retail outlets. In the case of service failures, FLEs are advised to give importance to consumers’ face restoration for facilitating consumer forgiveness.