Abstract
The concept of service recovery has received significant attention in the fields of service marketing. However, scarcely few prior research has attempted to explore service failure from a customer’s psychological perspective, a research gap that this paper aims to fill. We develop a structural equation model to examine the potential factors that may affect consumer forgiveness and test the role of forgiveness as the consumer’s coping strategy in the case of negative service incidents. The model is tested using survey data from online shopper (N = 308). PLS results reveal that in addition to service recovery, consumer forgiveness is also the key to reconstruct relationship with service provider. And brand trust is an important mediator between consumer forgiveness and repurchase intention. This study also shows the extent to which particular situational factors within the context of service failures and consumers’ personal traits may facilitate or impede consumer forgiveness.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252.
Blodgett, J. G., Wakefield, K. L., & Barnes, J. H. (1995). The effects of customer service on consumer complaining behavior. Journal of Services Marketing, 9(4), 31–42.
Buttle, F., & Burton, J. (2002). Does service failure influence customer loyalty? Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 1(3), 217–227.
Chiou, J. S., Droge, C., & Hanvanich, S. (2002). Does customer knowledge affect how loyalty is formed? Journal of Service Research., 5(2), 113–124.
Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85.
Dodds, W. B., Monroe, K. B., & Grewal, D. (1991). Effects of price, brand, and store information on buyers’ product evaluations. Journal of Marketing Research, 28(3), 307–319.
Enright, R. D., Gassin, E. A., & Wu, C. R. (1992). Forgiveness: A developmental view. Journal of Moral Education, 21(2), 99–114.
Enright, R. D., & North, J. (1998). In R. D. Enright & J. North (Eds.), Exploring forgiveness. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Enright, R. D., & The Human Development Study Group. (1991). The moral development of forgiveness. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewietz (Eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development (Vol. 1, pp. 123–152). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Etzel, M. J., & Silverman, B. I. (1981). A managerial perspective on directions for retail customer dissatisfaction research. Journal of Retailing, 57(3), 124–136.
Ferch, S. R. (1998). Intentional forgiving as a counseling intervention. Journal of Counseling and Development, 76(3), 261.
Fornell, C. (1992). A national customer satisfaction barometer: The Swedish experience. Journal of Marketing, 56(1), 6–21.
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error: Algebra and statistics. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(3), 382–388.
Fornell, C., & Wernerfelt, B. (1987). Defensive marketing strategy by customer complaint management: A theoretical analysis. Journal of Marketing Research, 24, 337–346.
Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., Anderson, R. E., & Tatham, R. L. (1998). Multivariate data analysis (5th ed.). Uppersaddle River, NJ: Prentice hall.
Hart, C. W., Heskett, J. L., & Sasser, W. E., Jr. (1989). The profitable art of service recovery. Harvard Business Review, 68(4), 148–156.
Hart, C. W., & Johnson, M. D. (1999). Growing the trust relationship. Marketing Management, 8(1), 8.
Hocutt, M. A., Bowers, M. R., & Todd Donavan, D. (2006). The art of service recovery: Fact or fiction? Journal of Services Marketing, 20(3), 199–207.
Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer.
McCollough, M. A., & Bharadwaj, S. G. (1992). The recovery paradox: An examination of consumer satisfaction in relation to disconfirmation, service quality, and attribution based theories. In C. T. Allen, T. J. Madden, T. A. Shimp, R. D. Howell, G. M. Zinkhan, D. D. Heisley, R. J. Semenik, P. Dickson, V. Zeithaml, & R. L. Jenkins (Eds.), Marketing theory and applications (p. 119). Chicago: American Marketing Association.
McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., & Worthington, E. L. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationship. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(2), 321–336.
Nunnally, J. C. (1978). Psychometric theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Richardson, A. (Ed.). (1951). A theological word book of the Bible. London: SCM Press.
Rowe, W. G., & Barnes, J. G. (1998). Relationship marketing and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Market-Focused Management, 2(3), 281–297.
Rye, M. S., Loiacono, D. M., Folck, C. D., Olszewski, B. T., Heim, T. A., & Media, B. P. (2001). Evaluation of the psychometric properties of two forgiveness scales. Current Psychology, 20(3), 260–277.
Shappell, S., & Wiegmann, D. (2003, April). Reshaping the way we look at general aviation accidents using the human factors analysis and classification system. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Symposium on Aviation Psychology (pp. 1047–1052).
Sheth, J. N., & Parvatiyar, A. (1995). The evolution of relationship marketing. International Business Review, 4(4), 397–418.
Tsarenko, Y., & Tojib, D. R. (2011). A transactional model of forgiveness in the service failure context: A customer-driven approach. Journal of Services Marketing, 25(5), 381–392.
Vitaliano, P. P., Russo, J., Weber, L., & Celum, C. (1993). The dimensions of stress scale: Psychometric properties. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23(22), 1847–1878.
Wiegmann, D. A., & Shappell, S. A. (1997). Human factors analysis of post accident data: Applying theoretical taxonomies of human error. The International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 7(1), 67–81.
Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2006). Forgiveness and reconciliation: Theory and application. New York: Routledge.
Worthington, E. L., & Scherer, M. (2004). Forgiveness is an emotion-focused coping strategy that can reduce health risks and promote health resilience: Theory, review, and hypotheses. Psychology & Health, 19(3), 385–405.
Xie, Y., & Peng, S. (2009). How to repair customer trust after negative publicity: The roles of competence, integrity, benevolence, and forgiveness. Psychology & Marketing, 26(7), 572–589.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Academy of Marketing Science
About this paper
Cite this paper
Han, L., Heng-Chiang, H., Chuan-Feng, S. (2018). The Way to Regained Trust Through Service Recovery Is Paved with Consumer Forgiveness: The Effects of Service Failure Characteristics. In: Krey, N., Rossi, P. (eds) Back to the Future: Using Marketing Basics to Provide Customer Value. AMSAC 2017. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66023-3_112
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66023-3_112
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-66022-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-66023-3
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)