Recuperação de serviço no delivery de refeições online: o processo e seus efeitos nas atitudes de observadores

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to analyze the service recovery processes in the online food delivery (OFD) service and its effects on the attitudes of observers. The OFD service is a recent business model enabled by the advance of technology, notably the dissemination of smartphones and expanded access to internet. It has deeply changed the food industry, as it allows people to buy and consume meal without going to the restaurants. Moreover, it expands the customers' base and sales of those restaurants, maximizing the use of its production capacity. As any services delivery, the enterprises in the field of OFD are subject to fail with customers. To mitigate these failures, enterprises promote the service recovery, i.e., actions developed to recover the satisfaction, attitudes and positive behaviors of customers. As this business model is unique, the recovery processes used by enterprises in the SDRO and their efficacy remain unknown. In addition, as recovery in the online ambient may be public, it demands studies about how service recovery affects the potential customers of that enterprise. Therefore, in order to fulfill the proposed objective, four studies were prepared: (i) a review of the literature on service recovery and justice theory, which is largely used in the investigation of this topic; (2) a qualitative study to identify potential failures in the OFD services, using the video capture as method; (3) Another qualitative study that, based on interviews with restaurant managers, investigated how these enterprises recover services; and finally, (4) a quantitative study that verified how the perception of three dimensions of justice affect the attitude of observers of the services recovery. Among the main results, this dissertation shows that although restaurants develop several actions to recover services, many of these are inefficacious and do not promote customers' satisfaction. It also showed that the perception by customers of high levels of distributive, interpersonal and procedural justice in relation to the recovery promoted by the restaurant leads to increased trust and intention to purchase, and reduced intention of negative word of mouth advertising. Theoretical and managerial contributions, as well as the agenda for further research, are discussed by the end of each chapter and in the final remarks of this work.