• 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.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.129-139
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• 2019

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of informational justice on post-recovery satisfaction, and the effect of post-recovery satisfaction on behavioral intentions in e-commerce, including further investigate the moderating effect of service failure severity. Using quantitative method, the population of this research are online customers in Indonesia, with non-probability sampling that will be done by purposive sampling method based on predetermined criterias, which are customers who were doing transactions in the Business to Consumer (B2C) online sites, experienced service failure in the last 6 months, submitted a complaint, and received a response. Sample of 317 online customers were gathered and analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling. The results of this study indicated that 5 hypothesis are supported with data. As a conclusion, informational justice and post-recovery satisfaction has positive effect, while service failure severity acts as a moderator between post-recovery satisfaction and behavioral intentions. As a managerial implication, online store management needs to ensure the informational justice to make a post-recovery satisfaction. Therefore, online store management needs to ensure the informational justice to make a post-recovery satisfaction, increase repurchase and positive e-word of mouth intention, also work harder to recover services, especially in high service failure severity condition.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.83-103
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• 2018

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of customer-contact employees support on service recovery efforts. Service companies should try to prevent the service failure situation from occurring, but it is realistic that the service failure occurs due to the characteristics of the service. Service recovery efforts of service providers are important because effective responses to service failures can enhance customer satisfaction despite service failures. Social support for customer-contact employees needs to improve service recovery efforts. Specifically, this study focuses on the mediation roles of job burnout and customer orientation in relationship between social support for customer-contact employees and service recovery efforts. Social exchange theory was used as the theoretical underpinning of the research model. Based on reciprocity principle, this paper suppose that support for customer-contact employees and service recovery effort are a kind of social exchange relationship. Social supports for customer-contact employees are categorized into internal and external organization. Internal organization is POS(perceived organizational support) and external organization is customer support. The research model was tested with the data gathered from the flight attendants whose emotional labor intensity was relatively high and the service failure frequently occurred. As a result of analysis, social supports for customer-contact employees classified into organizational support, supervisor support, and customer support are found to have differential impacts on job burnout and customer orientation. It has been found that job burnout of service providers is negatively affecting service recovery efforts. On the other hand, customer orientation of service providers has a positive influence on service recovery efforts. Based on the results of the analysis, we provide practical implications for effective service recovery efforts in service failure situations, and suggest the theoretical implications to explain the process of service recovery effort. Finally, limitations of the study and directions for future research are suggested.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.111-122
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• 2007

The purpose of the study is to find out the influences of various efforts on service recovery after the failure of the service for the customer satisfaction and a loyalty. The present study finds out the factors directly affecting service recovery and demonstrates the relationship of those factors with customer satisfaction and loyalty. As a result, the important factors for service recovery are an immediate compensation, truthfulness, reaction and assurance

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.71-93
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• 2015

With the rapid growth of the internet, electronic commerce has become accepted as one of the major purchasing channels for consumers. As more and more consumers search for and purchase products through the internet, intra-industry competition of electronic commerce has become fierce. Therefore, electronic commerce service providers pay attention to factors that prevent existing customers from leaving there services in the service failure situation. In this regard, electronic commerce service providers should make service recovery efforts for consumer recovery satisfaction after service failure. In this study, we suggest that procedural justice, interactional justice, distributive justice and authenticity have positive impacts on recovery satisfaction. In addition, we also propose that involvement plays moderating roles in the relationships between procedural justice, interactional justice, distributive justice, authenticity and recovery satisfaction. We collected empirical data for this study over a period of two weeks from subjects who had service failure recovery experiences through electronic commerce. A total of 224 complete and valid responses were obtained. We carried out data analysis using a two-step methodology with SPSS 20.0 and SmartPLS 2.0. The first step in the data analysis was to establish the internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminant validity of the constructs. In the second step, we examined the structural model. The empirical results support the proposed model and partly identify the moderating effect of involvement differences. The moderate effect results show that procedural justice, distributive justice and authenticity have different impacts on recovery satisfaction in two groups. Cognitive factor such as the procedural justice and distributive justice have stronger impacts on recovery satisfaction in the high-involvement goods than in the low-involvement goods, while emotional factor such as authenticity has a stronger impact on recovery satisfaction in the low-involvement goods than in the high-involvement goods. We expect that this result will provide researchers and managers who are interested in electronic commerce service failure recovery with useful theoretical and practical implications.

• 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.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.526-540
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• 2010

Due to fierce competition, many domestic fashion businesses are suffering difficulty in securing and maintaining customers. Accordingly, fashion companies are devoting all their energy to secure customers by using high quality and diverse strategies for distribution and promotion, and to secure loyalty by satisfying customers with the offer of excellent service. Thus, it is very important to provide systematic service recovery strategy available for handling service failure effectively. Therefore, the purpose of this study is comprehensively analyzing influences of expectation dis-confirmation and perceived justice for service recovery upon consumers' satisfaction and loyalty. The findings are as follows. First, as for the service failure that customers experienced, the more consumers who expect it to be recovered led to the higher formation of expectation-compensation dis-confirmation. Second, it was indicated that the higher seriousness in service failure that customers experienced led to the lower satisfaction and loyalty to service recovery. Third, as a result of examining influence of expectation-compensation dis-confirmation for service-failure recovery upon consumer satisfaction and loyalty, the customers who showed more positive dis-confirmation to expectation-compensation were indicated to form the more satisfaction and loyalty. Fourth, as a result of examining the influence of the perceived justice in the process of service-failure recovery upon customer satisfaction, all in 3 dimensions of justice had effect on customer satisfaction.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1123-1131
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• 2008

A considerable amount of research has focused on the dimensionality of service failure and recovery construct. This paper is focused on service failure and recovery in the Korean native cattle and imported beef restaurant industry in the Korea. So, this paper has adapted Kau and Loh's Service recovery measurement scale so that restaurant managers can use it to determine how customers perceive the service quality in Korean native cattle beef restaurant and imported beef restaurant. The purpose of this research is to test the difference in pre-purchase expectation and post-purchase actual performance of 4 dimensions between the restaurants that sell the beef of Korean native cattle and imported cattle. The paired t -test is used to test difference of pre-purchase expectation and post-purchase actual performance for service recovery measurement scale's 4 dimensions of the 2 restaurant types. But, there is significant difference between pre-purchase expectation and post-purchase actual performance in the 2 restaurant types.

• Journal of Applied Tourism Food and Beverage Management and Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.123-150
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to prove that the approprlate fit between service failure and recovery strategy can effciently maximize customer satisfaction and behavioral intention, by using prepared scenario through comprehensive approach concerning how the expectation level about service recovery has influences on perceived fairness, satisfaction and behavioral intention of servlce recovery based upon size in case of service failure. This study has been conducted by way of selection of filling-up type questionnaires for customers themselves who have experience in service failure out of customers who can easily visit family and hotel restaurants, that is, domestic restaurants in Seoul area, June ~ August 2004, by setting factorial design of 2(control, severeness) ${\times}$ 3(distributive fairness, procedural fairness, mutual relational fairness) ${\times}$ 2(customer satisfaction, customer behavior). The survey was performed on the customers who visited common restaurants, family restaurants, hotel restaurants, etc. mainly in Seoul, and total 600 sheets of questionnaires were distributed and 496 sheets of them were returned(82.67% of return ratio).

• 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.