The moderating role of perceived justice and satisfaction outcomes on the service recovery environment

Informações

Código: MKT2065
Divisão: MKT - Marketing
Tema de Interesse: Tema 05 - Marketing de Serviços e de Relacionamento

Autores

Lívia Lopes Barakat, Marlusa Gosling, Jase Ryan Ramsey

Resumo

This study was conducted in the Brazilian airline industry in a context of service failure andrecovery. Given the complexity, heterogeneity and inherent co-production of services(Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler, 2006), some level of imperfection is expected. Nevertheless,firms are capable of changing an unpleasant situation by providing an adequate servicerecovery (Grönroos, 2000). That is crucial for increasing justice evaluations (Tax & Brown,1998) and therefore customer satisfaction. Consequently, a satisfied customer may showdifferent behavioral responses. The purpose of this study is thus to explore how perceivedjustice dimensions (distributive, procedural and interactional) minimize the negative impact ofseverity on satisfaction in a service failure context. Furthermore, we demonstrate the differenteffects of satisfaction on behavioral outputs, such as loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, trustand intention to complain. A survey with 639 airline passengers was conducted in thedomestic boarding area of a large airport in Brazil. Data was entered and analyzed in thesoftware SPSS. Results from regressions show that the three dimensions of justice have apositive direct effect on satisfaction. Yet, only perceived justice moderates this relationship,such that the more customers perceive to have been treated fairly, the weaker the impact ofseverity on satisfaction. Even when a failure is considered very severe (e.g. lost baggage orflight canceled) airlines may recover by increasing customer’s justice perceptions. Also,customers in this context may be more concerned with having the failure promptly solvedthan getting compensation or a courteous treatment. Thus, airlines should focus in providing aflexible system and taking individual circumstances into account, acting quickly, and askingcustomer’s opinions about the best way to solve the problem. Besides, in a failure setting,satisfied customers are more prone to be loyal to the airline. Yet, once Brazilian airlineindustry may be considered an oligopoly, loyalty seems to be less a function of satisfactionand more of the lack of choice. Additionally, whereas some authors consider trust as anantecedent of satisfaction, it has proven to significantly be impacted by it. Therefore, a moresatisfied customer will trust more the service provider. Finally, Brazilian customers are littlemotivated to complain, even facing a failure situation. Rather, they prefer to engage in wordof-mouth communication, as typical in collective cultures. This study has importantimplications to the relationship marketing literature and to business operations in the airlinesector.

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