• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-36
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• 2012

Service failure is one of the major reasons for customer defection. As the business environment gets tougher and more competitive, a single service failure might bring about fatal consequences to a service provider or a firm. Sometimes a failure won't end up with an unsatisfied customer's simple complaining but with a wide-spread animosity against the service provider or the firm, leading to a threat to the firm's survival itself in the society. Therefore, we are in need of comprehensive understandings of complainants' attitudes and behaviors toward service failures and firm's recovery efforts. Even though a failure itself couldn't be fixed completely, marketers should repair the mind and heart of unsatisfied customers, which can be regarded as an successful recovery strategy in the end. As the outcome of recovery efforts exerted by service providers or firms, recovery of the relationship between customer and service provider need to put on the top in the recovery goal list. With these motivations, the study investigates how service failure and recovery makes the changes in dynamics of fundamental elements of customer-firm relationship, such as customer affection, customer trust and loyalty intention by comparing two time points, before the service failure and after the recovery, focusing on the effects of recovery satisfaction and the failure severity. We adopted La & Choi (2012)'s framework for development of the research model that was based on the previous research stream like Yim et al. (2008) and Thomson et al. (2005). The pivotal background theories of the model are mainly from relationship marketing and social relationships of social psychology. For example, Love, Emotional attachment, Intimacy, and Equity theories regarding human relationships were reviewed. As the results, when recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust that were established before the service failure are carried over to the future after the recovery. However, when recovery satisfaction is low, customer-firm relationship that had already established in the past are not carried over but broken up. Regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, once a failure occurs loyalty intention is not carried over to the future and the impact of customer trust on loyalty intention becomes stronger. Such changes imply that customers become more prudent and more risk-aversive than the time prior to service failure. The impact of severity of failure on customer affection and customer trust matters only when recovery satisfaction is low. When recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust become severity-proof. Interestingly, regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, failure severity has a significant negative influence on loyalty intention. Loyalty intention is the most fragile target when a service failure occurs no matter how severe the failure criticality is. Consequently, the ultimate goal of service recovery should be the restoration of customer-firm relationship and recovery of customer trust should be the primary objective to accomplish for a successful recovery performance. Especially when failure severity is high, service recovery should be perceived highly satisfied by the complainants because failure severity matters more when recovery satisfaction is low. Marketers can implement recovery strategies to enhance emotional appeals as well as fair treatments since the both impacts of affection and trust on loyalty intention are significant. In the case of high severity of failure, recovery efforts should be exerted to overreach customer expectation, designed to directly repair customer trust and elaborately designed in the focus of customer-firm communications during the interactional recovery process to affect customer trust rebuilding indirectly. Because it is a longer and harder way to rebuild customer-firm relationship for high severity cases, low recovery satisfaction cannot guarantee customer retention. To prevent customer defection due to service failure of high severity, unexpected rewards as a recovery will be likely to be useful since those will lead to customer delight or customer gratitude toward the service firm. Based on the results of analyses, theoretical and managerial implications are presented. Limitations and future research ideas are also discussed.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.115-125
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• 2013

Unexpected consumer dissatisfaction emerges through rapid growth and expansion of on-line shopping channel. This research focused on the fashion online retail channels' negative aspect caused by service failure which possibly disappointed consumers. We also tried to seek for appropriate service recovery types based on frequently offered recovery types on-line. Data from college students were analyzed. Results indicate that fitting problem, insufficient information, product defect, inventory problem and slow delivery were the main service failure types in apparel e-shopping. Regression analysis identified that among these types, insufficient information, product defect, and slow delivery had significant influence on channel satisfaction after post recovery effort. Results also confirmed significant relationships between channel satisfaction and channel switching. Consumers perceived benefit level causes overall channel satisfaction level to rise while perceived risk leads to lower level of channel satisfaction. Choosing desirable service recovery activities in each service failure situations is necessary in order to raise consumer's channel satisfaction in online apparel shopping.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.59-76
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• 2014

This research tries to present the role of Jung, which is well known as Koreans' traditional emotional attachment in service recovery process. Prior research on the service recovery have focused on relationship among perceived justice, recovery satisfaction and forgiveness. Especially perceived justice including distributive, procedural, and interactional justice has addressed as most important antecedents of recovery satisfaction. Although the pivotal role of emotional factors for successful service recovery has agreed by many researchers, relatively little attention has been paid to this issue. During the service recovery process, even if customer perceived recovery effort from service provider as justice one, they might feel displeasure or dissatisfaction. It means prior researches have underestimated the importance of emotional aspect, especially for Korean perspectives. In this study, we examined customer reactions to service failure and recovery process in restaurant service settings. Specifically, we focused on the moderating effect of 'Jung' on the paths between perceived justice and outcome variables such as forgiveness and recovery satisfaction.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.35-59
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• 2013

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of information service failure severity within existing framework of service recovery justice research and analyse the effects of the attribution of service recoveries on recovered user satisfaction and revisit. For empirical analysis, A total of 452 valid questionnaires were used to analyse the data gathered from university students who experienced the information service failures of university library. Some findings of the research are as follows: First, service failure severity has negative effect on service recovery justice. Second, procedural and interactional recovery justice has positive effect on recovered user satisfaction. Third, service recovery justice has significant influence on procedural and interactional justice. Finally, recovered user satisfaction has positive effect on user revisit and mouth of word.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.687-711
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• 2009

This research was conducted to explore the factors that cause medical tourists' dissatisfaction, and find ways to solve the tourists' problems by researching on the relationship between the service recovery and the failure of medical services. Also, the research has put more emphasis on establishing marketing strategies that enable Japanese medical tourists to actively visit Korea, and finding out the effects that the medical tourists satisfaction and trust have on their behavioral intentions, recommendations, and positive feedbacks. The summary of the research analysis results as follows. First, the service recovery after the service failure has positive influences on the medical tourist's satisfaction. Second, the service recovery has proven its positive influences on the tourists' trusts and behavioral intentions. Third, the satisfaction of the service recovery has built the mutual trust between the tourists' and the medical center, and this has positive influences on the customer's behavioral intentions. Finally, the research was conducted to analyze the moderating effects on the relationship between the service recovery and the recovery satisfaction. It was found that the medical service failure recognition type has proven no moderating effects.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.377-385
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• 2010

To find out an mediating variable between justice perception and switching intentions in the service failure and recovery context the study has centered mainly on justice perceptions, satisfaction and switching intentions after service failure. The researcher found that justice perceptions had negative effects on switching intentions, but satisfaction after service recovery didn't mediate between justice perceptions and switching intentions.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.47 no.7
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• pp.73-82
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of perceived justice associated with service recovery on perceived service quality, and the relationships among perceived service quality, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions in online apparel shopping contexts. Justice theory provided the theoretical framework for this study. The research strategy employed an online survey methodology. Online shoppers (N=669) who had experiences in service failure and dissatisfactions completed a questionnaire. The model of the study was tested by structural equation modeling (SEM) and the results of SEM revealed positive effect of perceived justice regarding service recovery on perceived service quality, positive effect of perceived service quality on customer satisfaction, and positive effect of customer satisfaction on behavioral intention. The results of this study have implications for online retailers. Online retailers need to understand the importance of service recovery by which service failures are managed.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.225-245
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• 2011

This study investigates the effects of justice dimensions on negative emotion, consumer satisfaction after service recovery, repurchase intention and word-of-mouth intention in a context of service recovery. Behavioral intentions(repurchase intention and word-of-mouth intention) are critical to the discount store sellers' survival and success. The research model is an extension of previous studies, especially considering more recent developments in the service recovery literature. A survey using 458 customers in China was conducted, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test the validity of the measurement model, and AMOS analysis approach was used to gain important insights into how customer retention in the discount store business can be ensured. The results suggest that all three dimensions of justice had negative effects on negative emotion, had positive effects on satisfaction after service recovery. Negative emotion had negative effects on recovery satisfaction. Recovery satisfaction had positive effects on repurchase intention and word-of-mouth intention. Finally, this study suggests the implications of these findings and offers directions for future research.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.233-240
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to understand the influence factors of job stress and resilience to recovery in an organization on job satisfaction and immersion in the organization. For this reason, we developed a questionnaire scale based on previous research, and conducted a questionnaire survey of the sales staff of company S. As a result of the analysis, it was found that job stress had a significant effect on job satisfaction, and job stress had a significant effect on recovery elasticity. It was shown that recovery elasticity affects job satisfaction and organizational immersion, and that job satisfaction affects organizational immersion, but the hypothesis that job stress has a significant effect on organizational immersion was rejected. In addition, it was found that recovery elasticity mediates the relationship between job stress, job satisfaction, and organizational immersion. The results of this study are expected to be used as guidelines for various practical plans that can improve the resilience of recovery as well as stress management of organizational members in the organization.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.75-115
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• 2007

This study investigated the effect of service provider's recovery effort and pre-failure customer-employee rapport on post-recovery consumer response such as satisfaction, purchase intention, and positive Word-of-Mouth communication. First, this study explored the interaction effect of recovery effort and customer-employee rapport on post-recovery consumer response. The result shows when the level of pre-failure customer-employee rapport is high, customer's positive responses decreased slightly even though they perceived low recovery effort. However, when the level of pre-failure customer-employee rapport is low, customer's responses were decreased considerably in case of low recovery effort. Second, this study examined 'service recovery paradox' which is post-recovery consumer's satisfaction is greater than the case of no service failure. The result shows recovery paradox was not supported in all samples regardless of the level of recovery effort and customer-employee rapport. Synthetically, customer-employee rapport took a buffering role in customer response after service failure although it's not the same as error-free state.