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Service failures usually occur in front of third-party customers. Third-party customers react emotionally and behaviorally to service failure and recovery efforts aimed at focal customers. However, there is a gap in the literature on how third-party customers react to a service failures incident and a recovery over another customer, depending on how socially close or distant they are from. This study investigates the effect of third-party customers' emotions on consumer forgiveness, negative word-of-mouth (WoM) and repatronage intentions in the service recovery process by comparing close and distant third-party customers.

This study utilizes a 2 (social distance to the focal customer: close, distant) × 2 (service recovery: yes, no) between-subjects design. The authors used a scenario-based experiment to test the proposed hypotheses. A total of 576 respondents were involved in the study.

The results from the authors' scenario-based experimental study show that positive and negative emotions felt by distant third-party customers are higher than those of close third-party customers. In addition, the effect of positive emotions on customer forgiveness is more substantial for distant third-party customers. Third, moderated-mediation analysis indicates that social distance has a moderator effect only on the relationship between positive emotions and customer forgiveness.

This study contributes to the service literature by comparing socially close and socially distant third-party customers' reactions to service failure and recovery attempts.

This paper aims to present a conceptual model for public relations specific to museums.

Based on relevant literature, a contingency model is developed for the public relations practices of museums.

The model offers the market orientation level of the management and the interest level of the publics as the major factors that influence the effectiveness of the public relations programs in museums. The interest level of the publics is offered as a moderating variable.

The model suggests that the effectiveness of the public relations programs of museums depends on two major factors. Although the interest level of the publics may seem to be uncontrollable at first glance, its negative impact can be largely controllable by managers by changing their own market orientation level – by adapting the public relations strategy to the targeted public depending on the interest level of that public.

The model is specifically designed for museums. It can be accepted as the first public relations model specifically offered for museums. The model here recognises the relationship between marketing and public relations.