Service failure and recovery remain critical issues for both academicians and marketing practitioners. Defined as a service providers response to a failed service, service recovery can mean the difference between a firms success and failure, for increasing customer retention and limiting customer defection are integral components of organizational growth and profitability.
The purpose of this dissertation was two-fold: (1) to test the effects of magnitude of service failure, service failure responsiveness, and the presence of a service guarantee on customer satisfaction levels and other service recovery outcomes (Study 1); and (2) to test the effects of additional recovery effort and magnitude of service failure on customer satisfaction levels and other service recovery outcomes (Study 2). Additional objectives of Study 2 included examining the data for evidence of two posited phenomena: (1) the plateau effect, characterized by a leveling off effect in regard to the effects on the dependent variables as service failure recovery increases, and (2) the service recovery paradox effect, evidenced by increasing levels of satisfaction and repurchase intentions as recovery remuneration increases, to the point that levels of these criterion variables are higher among those experiencing a service failure compared to those who did not experience a service failure.
The results indicated several findings. Magnitude of service failure had a very strong individual and moderating influence on all outcome variables. Service failure responsiveness can have positive effects on these outcome variables, but only under the condition of a low level of magnitude of service failure. Service guarantee was found to have little effect on service outcomes. Evidence was present to indicate that a plateau effect occurs as recovery remuneration increases, and very little support was found to support the contention that the recovery paradox effect should be present as recovery remuneration increases.
This research has made a contribution to the study of service failure and recovery. It is hoped that there will be continued interest in examining additional constructs, trying different methodologies, and studying new effects in this field of marketing research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04152004-165814 |
| Date | 16 April 2004 |
| Creators | Kerr, Anthony Hugh |
| Contributors | Abhijit Biswas, Alvin C. Burns, Arthur G. Bedeian, Kathleen L. Rees, William C. Black |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04152004-165814/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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