Service failure is well documented in service marketing literature, which mainly focuses on service interactions between employees and individual customers. However, prior research has not examined customers’ emotional and behavioral responses during group service failure—that is, a service involving a group of customers who do not meet the expectations of all or the majority of the customers. Compared with service failure involving individual customers (individual service failure), customers in group service failure are likely to show different emotional and behavioral characteristics. The authors conduct two experiments and find that customers have higher levels of anger and complaint intentions in group service failure than in individual service failure. In addition, the displays of anger by surrounding customers are positively related to individual customers’ anger. Through a second experiment, this article further investigates the role of group size and group familiarity on group emotional contagion during group service failure. The results show that both group size and group familiarity moderate the relationship between the displays of anger by surrounding customers and an individual customer’s anger—that is, the effect of group emotional contagion is stronger in a large/familiar group than in a small/unfamiliar group. The results provide several theoretical and managerial implications for research in group service failure.

This paper investigates the dynamic impact of multiple sequential emotional displays by employees on customers' negative emotions. Using video-based stimuli to manipulate emotional displays by employees, this study shows the sequential occurrences of negative and positive emotional contagions in service failure and recovery encounters. The results suggest that higher levels of employees' negative emotional displays lead to a greater increase in customers' negative emotions through the process of negative emotional contagion during service failure. More importantly, we find that positive emotional displays by employees can decrease customers' negative emotions through the process of positive emotional contagion during service recovery, i.e., higher levels of employee positive emotional displays lead to a greater decrease in customers' negative emotions. In addition, no matter whether customers experience higher or lower levels of employee positive emotional displays during service recovery, their final negative emotions cannot fully return to their emotional levels prior to service failure. However, for customers experiencing higher levels of employee positive emotional displays, their final negative emotions can be greatly mitigated and are closer to their initial emotional levels, as compared to customers experiencing lower levels of employee positive emotional displays. The results further indicate that susceptibility to emotional contagion increases the effect of employees' negative (positive) emotional displays on customers' negative emotions during service failure (recovery). The findings of this study suggest that service firms should provide effective training to their frontline service employees so that they can display proper positive emotions during service encounters.

On-chip integrated mode-division multiplexing (MDM) is an emerging technique for large-capacity data communications. In the past few years, while several configurations have been developed to realize on-chip MDM circuits, their practical applications are significantly hindered by the large footprint and inter-mode cross talk. Most importantly, the high-speed MDM signal transmission in an arbitrarily routed circuit is still absent. Herein, we demonstrate the MDM circuits based on digitized meta-structures which have extremely compact footprints. 112 Gbit/s signals encoded on each mode are arbitrarily routed through the circuits consisting of many sharp bends and compact crossings with a bit error rate under forward error correction limit. This will significantly improve the integration density and benefit various on-chip multimode optical systems.

We have theoretically and experimentally investigated dual-core photonic bandgap fibers (PBGFs), which consist of a cladding with an array of high-index rods and two cores formed by omitting two nearby rods. We find novel features in their coupling characteristics such as maxima and minima in coupling length, complete decoupling of the cores, and an inversion of the usual ordering of supermodes so that the odd supermode has the higher propagation constant. This behavior is understood by considering the field distribution in the rods between the cores.

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Abstract:We propose and demonstrate a tunable multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser based on a polarizationmaintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF) Sagnac loop filter. Stable, room-temperature operation is obtained by employing a nonlinear optical loop mirror. At a central wavelength of 1563.000 nm, we generate 60 wavelengths within 3-dB bandwidth. The measured power fluctuation for each lasing wavelength is less than 0.2 dB in half an hour. Furthermore, by adjusting the polarization controllers in the Sagnac filter, wavelength locations of the laser lines with a fixed channel spacing of ∼ 0.078 nm can be continuously shifted.Intensity, 2 dB/div 1562.6

PurposeThe concept of face has been deeply embedded in Chinese culture. This paper aims to examine the role of face in service failure and recovery encounters, and to explore the factors that influence customer emotions, recovery satisfaction and behavioral intention based on a proposed conceptual model.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a scenario role‐play‐based experimental design to examine the proposed conceptual model in service failure and recovery encounters.FindingsThe results show that face plays an important role in service failure and recovery encounters. Specifically, it is found that the utilitarian recovery and symbolic recovery customers receive in the service recovery encounter can both influence customer face restoration, which in turn affects customer emotions, and behavioral intention on service recovery. Customer emotions are significantly correlated to customer recovery satisfaction.Practical implicationsThe practical implications of this study are mainly two‐fold. First, service providers should pay attention to customers' perceptions of face during service encounters. They should also train their employees to treat all customers with utmost sincerity, which will help to enhance the positive emotional experience of customers. Second, the recovery offered by service providers should not be limited to utilitarian recovery. It has to take into account symbolic recovery as well.Originality/valueThis paper investigates the role of face in service recovery encounters and suggests that face significantly influences customer emotions and behavioral intention on service recovery, and customer emotions in turn significantly affect customer recovery satisfaction

We demonstrate a novel fiber-based in-line DPSK demodulator using an in-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). The device is fabricated by mismatch splicing of a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with standard single mode fibers. The spectral characteristics at different PCF lengths are analyzed. The envelope of the interference fringes show a period that is inversely proportional to the PCF length, and is attributed to the periodic coupling between the core mode and the cladding mode. Error free demodulations of 10-Gb/s RZ- and NRZ-DPSK signals have been demonstrated using the in-fiber PCF-MZI demodulator with only 3-m PCF to introduce 91-ps delay. Wideband DPSK demodulation has also been achieved.