Former Springboks Under-20 skipper CJ Stander, on his full Munster debut, went over the top of the ruck from a quick lineout to touch down and set his side on their way.
Tommy O'Donnell grabbed Munster's second try before Ronan O'Gara added a penalty and Stander ran in his second from distance.
After the break, some typical Munster pressure at scrum-time delivered a penalty try and O'Gara landed the conversion to give the province a convincing win.
It made it back-to-back RaboDirect PRO12 defeats for the Warriors after their 6-0 loss to Leinster at Scotstoun last time out, and Townsend admitted his disappointment.
"That was our poorest performance of the season by a distance," said Townsend.
"We dropped off tackles and we stepped off Munster. We said before we came to Ireland that we had to make sure that we put pressure on them. But instead we did the opposite.
"We need to make sure now that we use this as motivation to get back to a far higher level of performance.
"We need to show that we are the kind of side who belong alongside the best teams in the competition."
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