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Customers weigh service failures more heavily than outcomes of services received. These service failures are the main cause of customer switching behavior. Service recovery is one of the alternatives to restore customer satisfaction with the organization. In this study we propose a framework to investigate the impact of service failure and recovery procedures on customer satisfaction and their behavioral intentions based on equity and social exchange theory. According to these theories customers' perceived justice plays significant role in shaping customer satisfaction after service failure and recovery. The study intends to examine the effect of procedural justice, distributive justice, interactional justice and severity of service failure on customer satisfaction and to examine whether a service recovery paradox exists or not. This article describes the development and refinement of the measure to assess service recovery and its impact on behavioral intentions. The study examines the reliability, internal consistency and validity of the scale. The study resulted in 33 item scale which measures behavioral intentions of customers after seeking redress.
INTRODUCTION
The ever growing competition and continuous increase in customer expectations and demands have made customer satisfaction and related constructs to be the main focus of research in services (Kandampully, 1998; Chumpitaz and Paparoidamis, 2004). To overcome this cut-throat competition, every organization is trying to improve efficiency, increase customer loyalty and build long-term relationships with their customers without sacrificing quality of service (Javalgi and Moberg, 1997). Improving quality and customer satisfaction reduces costs associated with defective goods and services such as warranty costs, replacing defective goods and complaint handling (Anderson et al., 1997). High quality will lead to high customer retention which in turn is strongly related to profitability (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990; Fornell, 1992). Because services are intangible, perishable, heterogeneous, consumed and produced at the same time, zero defect service is impossible (Gronross, 1992). One negative service encounter or service has the potential to lower consumers' overall satisfaction permanently (Hocutt et al., 2006). Therefore, the ability to get it right the first time is thought to offer significant benefits to the organization in terms of higher loyalty, more repurchase intentions and significantly lower switch and external response intentions than those with unresolved problems (Zeithaml et al., 1996; Schoefer and Ennew, 2005).
Recovery is a management...