Service Recovery Effects on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty, Moderating by Restaurant Type and Failure Scenarios

• Main Authors: THUY-LINH PHAN, 潘翠玲
• Other Authors: Hsiu-Li Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/64006701431583786148

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 企業管理學系碩士班 === 103 === Nowadays keeping and developing relationships with current customers is a key business strategy. As a result, most restaurants attempt to deliver first-class service in order to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. However problems and complaints seem to occur over a lifetime of customer relationships. In general, service failure is inevitable; it can negatively affect the satisfaction and loyalty of customers. Therefore, service recovery strategy has always been considered a valuable tool to complement customer satisfaction in restaurant. The purpose of this study is (1) to examine the difference of customers’ satisfaction in recovery when they received different levels of dimension fairness in numerous service failures; (2) to test the effect of service recovery on the customer loyalty and satisfaction in numerous service failures and recoveries context. The study employed scenario experimented with three dimensions of fairness manipulated at eight levels each. Online survey (160 copies) and paper-based survey (480 copies) were distributed. Total respondents are 640 people. All respondents were regular restaurant customers. The result indicates several findings. Different level compensation of the recovery has a significant influence on majority of outcome variables. Other findings were found related to the customers’ prior experience with failure and recovery. In a casual restaurant, customers who experience service failure and recovery at the first time reported a higher satisfaction with service provider than who experiences service failure and recovery at the second time regardless of received different levels of compensation in service recovery. However, in a luxury restaurant, the report is in contrast with casual restaurant. The contributions of this study can be divided into two main points. First, this research provided the insights into the customer’s reaction to numerous service failures, although a service failure might negatively affect customers’ relationship with the service provider, effective service recovery reinforced attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Second, managers are also advised to view service recovery efforts not only as a strategy to recover customers’ immediate satisfaction but also as a relationship tool to provide customers confidence that ongoing relationships are beneficial to them.