It is now well recognised that an effective service recovery program is an essential part of firms??? service quality programs and critical to generating customer satisfaction and loyalty. A number of studies have investigated the impact of service recovery efforts (compensation, speed of response, etc.) on post-recovery satisfaction, mostly in Western countries. However, despite the importance of global markets, very few have examined how Eastern consumers react to service recovery efforts. Furthermore, none have examined the impact of cultural value orientation (cultural values measured at the individual level) in implementing effective service recovery programs. This is one of the few studies that have attempted to avoid the ecological fallacy, i.e., assume all consumers within a country are culturally homogeneous. Based on Justice Theory, this research conducted in Thailand, employed an experimental design to investigate how customer evaluations of service recovery efforts are influenced by interplay of the consumer???s cultural value orientation and service recovery attributes (apology, compensation, cognitive control, recovery initiation, and formality). The results reveal that cultural values of power distance, uncertainty avoidance and collectivism do indeed interact with a firm???s recovery tactics to influence perceptions of justice. In other words, the impact of a firm???s tactics is culturally dependent, and consumer expectations and perceptions of service recovery efforts vary, depending on customers??? cultural value orientation. Finally, all three forms of justice (distributive, procedural, interactional) along with disconfirmation of expectations, positively impact on overall service recovery satisfaction. Unlike previous studies, we found evidence to indicate that there is a temporal sequence associated with the three justice dimensions i.e., interactional and procedural justice precede and thus impact perception of distributive (outcome) justice. The results have implication for marketing theory as well as managerial action.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/187934 |
Date | January 2005 |
Creators | Prasongsukarn, Kriengsin, Marketing, Australian School of Business, UNSW |
Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. Marketing |
Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Rights | Copyright Kriengsin Prasongsukarn, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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