ABSTRACT Virtually all sources on service recovery stress the importance of offering an apology to complaining customers. To date, however, our understanding of who should offer the apology and how to offer the apology is still limited. Taking a cross-cultural perspective, Study 1 shows that Eastern customers attach more value to a manager (vis-à-vis a frontline employee) offering an apology than Western customers in an offline retailing context, but not in an online retailing context. In an online setting, Study 2 further extends these insights by showing that the status of service personnel matters for Eastern customers, but only if the apology is provided publicly on social media and not if the apology is provided online privately. Global e-commerce managers can benefit from these findings when developing their service recovery strategies. By demonstrating that recovery strategies that are proposed and tested in offline settings are non transferrable to online settings, this article provides a clearer understanding of service recovery across online and offline channels. Based on face theory, this research highlights the public versus private nature of an apology in a global online retailing context, thus contributing to the emerging research in online service recovery.

中文翻译：

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全球在线零售服务失败道歉的影响

摘要 几乎所有关于服务恢复的消息来源都强调向抱怨的客户道歉的重要性。然而，迄今为止，我们对谁应该道歉以及如何道歉的理解仍然有限。从跨文化的角度来看，研究 1 表明，在离线零售环境中，东方客户比西方客户更重视经理（相对于一线员工）提供道歉，但在线零售环境中则不然。在在线环境中，研究 2 进一步扩展了这些见解，表明服务人员的状态对东方客户很重要，但前提是道歉在社交媒体上公开提供，而不是在网上私下提供道歉。全球电子商务经理在制定服务恢复策略时可以从这些发现中受益。通过证明在离线设置中提出和测试的恢复策略不可转移到在线设置，本文提供了对跨在线和离线渠道的服务恢复的更清晰的理解。本研究基于面子理论，突出了全球在线零售环境中道歉的公开性与私密性，从而为在线服务恢复方面的新兴研究做出了贡献。