Perceived justice and service recovery satisfaction in a post-transition economy

Abstract

This paper aims to improve the understanding of outcomes of service recovery in a post-transition context by examining the relationships between four dimensions of perceived justice and service recovery satisfaction (SRS), positive word of mouth (PWOM) and repurchase intentions. Results from a survey of 217 Slovenian telecommunications customers with actual recovery experiences reveal that distributive, informational and interpersonal (but not procedural) justice are positively related to SRS, which acts as a mediator between these three justice dimensions and repurchase intentions and PWOM. Further analysis indicates that duration of customer-firm relationship negatively moderates the link between interpersonal justice and SRS. These findings provide a theoretical explanation of inconsistent findings in previous studies regarding the importance of interactional justice. For managers, our findings indicate that service providers should always pay attention to providing fair compensation, truthful information and fair interpersonal treatment to complainants, while the interpersonal treatment during service recovery matters even more to customers whose relationships with the provider are in the development phase.

Encouraging Brand Evangelism Through Failure Attribution and Recovery Justice: The Moderating Role of Emotional Attachment

“…Procedural justice is evaluated according to whether customers are free to express their opinions, transparency in the recovery process, and appropriateness of recovery measures ( Tax et al, 1998 ; Smith et al, 1999 ; Maxham and Netemeyer, 2003 ). Previous studies have pointed out that procedural justice positively influences recovery satisfaction ( Lii et al, 2012 ; Wen and Chi, 2013 ; Esen and Sonmezler, 2017 ; Rashid et al, 2017 ; Azzahro et al, 2020 ; ALhawbani et al, 2021 ; Badawi et al, 2021 ; Gidaković and Čater, 2021 ). Therefore, we hypothesize:…”

“…Controllability is defined as whether customers consider the cause of failure be prevented or controlled by the firm. Customers will express dissatisfaction and tend to blame service providers if they believe that the causes of failure can be controlled by the service provider ( Nikbin et al, 2014 , 2015 ; Ngahu, 2019 ; Jiang, 2020 ; Malombe and Choudhury, 2020 ; Gidaković and Čater, 2021 ). So this study assumes the presence of a negative correlation between controllability and recovery satisfaction, if the cause of failure is controllable.…”

“…Compensation includes a refund, exchange, repair, discount, coupon, etc. Prior studies have pointed out that distributive justice positively affects recovery satisfaction ( Wen and Chi, 2013 ; Tsai et al, 2014 ; Esen and Sonmezler, 2017 ; Rashid et al, 2017 ; Azzahro et al, 2020 ; Gidaković and Čater, 2021 ). Therefore, we hypothesize:…”