Service Recovery and Post Purchase Behavior: an Experimental Study (original) (raw)

Keeping customers satisfied has been the basis of doing business. In the specific, an industry must be seen not as a goods producing process, but as a customer-satisfying process. The aim of this research is to investigate how service recovery strategies influence customer service recovery expectations. This study also develops a model which posits a simultaneous relationship among service recovery expectation, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and favorable word-of-mouth. Service scenario scripts were developed to depict service recovery expectations in an airline setting. The scripts, which varied in terms of level of (a) apology, (b) compensation and (c) explanation, were presented to 160 respondents. The findings of this study show no significant main effects of apology, compensation, and explanation on service recovery expectations. However, the interaction between explanation and compensation and the interaction between apology and compensation were observed. In relating with relationship among variables, this study supports the relationship between customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and favorable word-of-mouth. However, a non-significant relationship between service recovery expectations and customer satisfaction was found. The paper provides an analysis of the data, a discussion of the findings and offers directions for future research.