Is corporate reputation a double-edged sword? Relative effects of perceived justice in airline service recovery

The “Terminal” Effects of Service Failure on Airlines: Examining Service Recovery with Justice Theory

“…They found interactional justice and procedural justice to influence recovery satisfaction, yet found distributive justice to have no significant influence. Also focusing on airline passengers, both Ding, Ho, and Lii (2015) and Nikbin et al (2015) found that distributive justice had the strongest influences on postrecovery evaluation of air travelers, which is contradictory to the findings of Chang and Chang (2010). While prior studies have had somewhat confounding results, this study proposes the following hypotheses:…”

“…Far from being recognized for “error-free service,” airline passengers regularly report negative experiences that include overbooking, delayed flights, canceled flights, and lost luggage (Nikbin and Hyun 2015; Chang and Chang 2010). Delivering superior service recovery may serve to distinguish airlines from competition and increase the likelihood of obtaining a loyal customer base (Ding, Ho, and Lii 2015; Al-Refaie, Bata, Eteiwi, and Jalham, 2014).…”

“…Because of the many potential impacts of service recovery on the sustainability of airlines, additional research is needed for the following reasons. Although service recovery has been a prominent focus in tourism literature for decades (Graham and Sparks 2009), few studies have focused on the airline industry (Park and Park 2016; Bamford and Xystouri 2005) and fewer still have examined recovery strategies using justice theory (Ding, Ho, and Lii 2015). Of the articles examining airline service recovery that are grounded in justice theory, the findings have been contradictory (see Table 1).…”

“…Successful service recoveries have been found to increase profits (Swanson and Hsu 2011), customer satisfaction (Chang and Hung 2013), retention or loyalty (Miller, Craighead, and Karwan 2000), and promulgation of positive word-of-mouth advertising (Kim, Ok, and Canter 2012). It has been further suggested that exceptionally strong recovery attempts can lead to customer evaluations higher than transactions with no perceived service failure whatsoever, resulting in a phenomenon Etzel and Silverman (1981) identified as the service recovery paradox (Ding, Ho and Lii 2015).…”

“…Originating with customer complaint behavior, previous studies suggest that justice perceptions are a strong predictor of consumer satisfaction (Siu, Zhang, and Yau 2013; Wen and Chi 2013; Ding, Ho, and Lii 2015) and effective service recovery attempts have been found to repair customer dissatisfaction (McCollough, Berry, and Yadav 2000; Kuo et al 2013a). This is important as it suggests that service providers, when given the opportunity to right a perceived wrong, have an opportunity to sustain a strong service provider–customer relationship.…”