The Role of Recovery Satisfaction on the Relationship between Service Recovery and Brand Evangelism: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The aim of every organization is to deliver the utmost service to the customers. However, in certain circumstances, it is impossible to provide service with zero defect. Even the best organizations in the word are unable to escape from service failure. In recent years, practitioners and researchers are interested to explore the best measures to recover from service failure. Numerous studies have been established to investigate the effect of service recovery on customer satisfaction. Justice theory is one of the well-known theoretical foundation that has been referred in service recovery studies. By means of the same theory which is represented by distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice as well as their relationships with recovery satisfaction, this study proposes further investigation on how these exogenous factors promote or influence brand evangelism. Brand evangelism represents an extension to word of mouth communication. This exploration is believed to be the first incorporating brand evangelism in service recovery context. The anticipated managerial implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed in this conceptual paper.

Encouraging Brand Evangelism Through Failure Attribution and Recovery Justice: The Moderating Role of Emotional Attachment

“…Customer satisfaction has been a popular topic of marketing and consumer behavior research ( Wei et al, 2021 ). No company can overlook the significance of delivering the best service to gain customer satisfaction ( Rashid and Ahmad, 2014 ). In general, customer satisfaction is a pleasant state of consumers when their needs and desires are met ( Oliver, 1997 ).…”

“…Word-of-mouth means informally providing consumers with opinions on brand evaluation, while brand evangelism is a method of delivering opinions to consumers with credibility and expertise. The study of brand evangelism is still in its infancy and little attention has been given to encouraging brand evangelism in service recovery ( Rashid and Ahmad, 2014 ). Because brand evangelism is firmly rooted in word-of-mouth, and many service recovery studies reveal recovery satisfaction as an important antecedent of positive word-of-mouth ( Maxham and Netemeyer, 2002 ; Wen and Chi, 2013 ), this study examines how to encourage brand evangelism through recovery satisfaction from the perspective of failure attribution and recovery justice.…”

“…In connection with service recovery measures, customers judge whether the outcomes provided by service providers are fair ( Wu et al, 2020 ). Rashid and Ahmad (2014) stated that the key to distributive justice is the compensation provided to customers for losses and inconveniences caused by a service failure ( Rashid and Ahmad, 2014 ). Noone (2012) and Bambauer-Sachse and Rabeson (2015) highlighted that compensation effectively alleviates customer dissatisfaction after a service failure ( Noone, 2012 ; Bambauer-Sachse and Rabeson, 2015 ).…”

Apology and Compensation Strategy on Customer Forgiveness and Negative Word of Mouth

“…The service recovery strategy constitutes an action performed by an organization to respond the service failure that consists of improvement, change, and replacement in order to return the customer satisfaction and maintain the good relationship (Miller, Craighead, & Karwan, 2000;Park & Park, 2016;Rashid & Ahmad, 2014). In its implementation, the service recovery strategy should be proactive, wellplanned, and empowering all the employees of the company to perform the best service recovery (Wirtz & Lovelock, 2018).…”

“…The service offered by the company will represent a vision, missions, and values of the organization and the customer will assess the credibility of the company. Every business aims to offer the best service to its customers because customer satisfaction is used as the standard in measuring the company success, so if this target can be reached, the company will gain many benefits in their competition with the other business (Rashid & Ahmad, 2014). Moreover, customer satisfaction will determine customer trust and attitude for the next transaction (Ranaweera & Prabhu, 2003).…”