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Abstract
This study investigated the effects of three types of service recovery on customers post-recovery satisfaction, as mediated by customers perceived justice and emotions and moderated by the severity of the service failure and their expectations of service recovery. The study employed a scenario-based experimental survey method in an online apparel retailing setting and used two experimental research settings related to service failure and service recovery. Using Qualtrics.com, 377 participants were recruited, and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), analysis of variance (ANOVA), and regression were conducted to test hypotheses.The results confirmed that the customers perceived justice and emotions differed across the service recovery types, and distributive and interactional justice differed significantly by service recovery type, whereas procedural justice did not differ significantly. Additionally, positive emotions differed significantly across the three types of service recovery, whereas negative emotions did not differ. The three dimensions of perceived justice as well as positive and negative emotions were found to be significant predictors of post-recovery satisfaction. This study also found moderating effect of service failure severity, but the service recovery expectations had no moderating effects on either the relationships between perceived justice and post-recovery satisfaction or the relationships between emotions and post-recovery satisfaction. The service failure severity has a significant effect on service recovery expectations. These results imply that marketers must differentiate their service recovery strategies, emphasizing not only the physical format but also the manner of service recovery. In particular, this study ascertained the importance of an apology to determine customers perceptions of justice and emotions. This strategic approach, which focuses on the sincere manner of service recovery, such as apologies, would be more cost effective than monetary compensation. This study also empirically confirms the importance of customers affective responses to service recovery as much as their cognitive responses. The strategic importance of the customers affective responses, particularly their negative emotions, was also significantly addressed in the results of the moderating effects of the service failure severity. Thus, marketers should particularly understand how severely customers have perceived their service failures to be when formulating service recovery strategies that meet customer demands.