Types of Service Failures and the Effectiveness of Service Recovery Strategies: Chinese Customers' Perspective

摘要

This research proposes a new classification of service failures from customers' perspective: monetary damage, goods damage, and mental damage. Accordingly, three kinds of service recovery strategies are identified: monetary recovery, goods recovery, and psychological recovery. The authors develop a model to depict the relationship among service failures, consumer response, service recovery strategy and its effectiveness. Two studies were conducted to examine the theoretical hypotheses based on the model. Study 1 investigated participants' (N=53) responses towards 6 representative events of service failure in restaurant and tourist industry, surveyed their expectations for recovery to each failure. Study 2 examined participants' (N=110) evaluations to the three kinds of service recovery strategies, including their satisfaction and perception of justice. The findings confirm that: (1) Consumers are more willing to make direct response when they encounter monetary damage failure or goods damage failure, while mental damage happens, they are more inclined to make indirect response; (2) Within a certain range, psychological recovery is more effective to recuperate mental damage, while monetary recovery is more effective to recuperate goods damage and monetary damage.