Moral judgment and perceived justice in service recovery

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the effect of perceived justice and consumer's moral judgment of a service failure on recovery outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThe research model is examined by adopting a field study approach followed by an experiment. The SPSS program with the PROCESS tool was used to analyze the simple moderation and moderated mediation effects.FindingsThe research findings show that consumer's moral judgment of a service failure moderates the relationship between service recovery (psychological compensation vs monetary compensation) and recovery outcomes (recovery satisfaction, negative word of mouth and repurchase intention). Moreover, the conditional indirect effect of service recovery on recovery outcomes through perceived justice is significant when service failure is seen as less moral. Specifically, consumers report lower perceived justice and react negatively to recovery measures when service failure is seen as less moral. In contrast, when consumers perceive a service failure as moral, a psychological compensation outperforms a monetary compensation, lessening negative word of mouth (NWOM).Originality/valueThese findings provide important insights into recovery measure development when considering consumer moral perspectives.

Service recovery efforts' influence on consumers' desire to reciprocate and forgiveness: the mediating role of perceived justice

“…Therefore, perceived justice is considered a significant indicator of successful service recovery (Smith et al, 1999). Consequently, service recovery scholars put an increased emphasis on perceived justice as an evaluative mechanism for service failure and recovery encounters (Ma and Zhong, 2021;Matikiti et al, 2019;Muhammad and Gul-E-Rana, 2019).…”

“…Since the service recovery efforts are aimed to achieve customers' positive evaluation of service recovery, previous studies provide mixed findings on the effectiveness of service recovery efforts (Harun et al, 2018). Also, studies show that a large sum of consumers remains dissatisfied with service recovery (Ma and Zhong, 2021). To this end, it is crucial to examine how service recovery efforts can be better evaluated by consumers.…”

“…, 2018). Also, studies show that a large sum of consumers remains dissatisfied with service recovery (Ma and Zhong, 2021). To this end, it is crucial to examine how service recovery efforts can be better evaluated by consumers.…”

Consumer discrimination in service recovery situations

“…In other words, contextual cues related to social class may lead to perceived discrimination in the service encounter and it will influence customers' reactions. The fairness theory argues that when an individual receives an unfair treatment it elicits negative responses from them (Ma and Zhong, 2021). Nonetheless, in this research, we propose that companies may face negative responses from customers who were treated fairly and received higher compensation because of perceptions of discrimination against other consumers.…”

Relationship outcomes following a service failure: the role of agent likability

“…Service recovery is necessary to soften negative sentiments toward and mitigate detrimental outcomes experienced by the organization (Ma and Zhong, 2021). Despite the importance of service recovery, there has been relatively limited research on its outcomes such as reconciliation and retaliation (Radu et al, 2018).…”