Justice-based Service Recovery Expectations: Measurement and Antecedents

Abstract

This study attempts to empirically test an alternative conceptualization that directly integrates perceived justice within the expectancy-disconfirmation framework. While our model acknowledges injustice as an important psychological motivator of redress seeking after service failures, we hypothesize that different components of injustice, namely distributive, procedural, and interactional justice, can be meaningfully integrated within the expectancy-disconfirmation model. We examine the measurement properties of our conceptualization based on a field experiment with a sample of 875 respondents. We found that consumers form normative recovery expectations distinctly in terms of distributive justice and procedural/interactional justice. These justice-based recovery expectations are also negatively related to recovery disconfirmation as hypothesized. The results support our attempt to directly incorporate perceived justice within the expectancy-disconfirmation framework. We also explore potential antecendents to consumer recovery expectations and found that each of the two justice components draws from distinct antecedents. All three tested antecedents - magnitude of servce failure, switching cost, and length of the customer-organization relationship - are found to have either a direct or an interactive effect on expectations of distributive justice and procedural/interactional justice.