Corporations make an effort to satisfy customers, and invest lots of money in attracting new customers. Like the case of an off-line corporations, it is important for on-line corporations to manage existing customers by establishing favorable relation...
Corporations make an effort to satisfy customers, and invest lots of money in attracting new customers. Like the case of an off-line corporations, it is important for on-line corporations to manage existing customers by establishing favorable relationship with them, because it is beneficial for cost saving and continued corporate development. For maintaining a long-term and favorable relationship with customers, an effort is required to settle the complaints of customers.
When their complaints are efficiently dealt with, the customers who once experienced a complaint come to recognize better the quality of service has been enhanced. Effective complaint controls enable a corporation to achieve a long term and favorable relationship with customers along with customer satisfaction and also to prevent customers switching, thus service recovery is very important (Zeithaml et al., 1993). The use of Internet and mobile devices become more common, this enables the constant growth of on-line market, however, here complaints are increasing as well. Nevertheless, there have been less studies on the on-line service failures and their recovery than the studies on service failures and complaints of off-line corporations such as a hotel, restaurant, and airline company.
This study examines the effects of severity of service failure and controllability on recovery satisfaction, and the moderating effect of perceived justice, along with how they totally affect the customers repurchase intention.
For this study, data was collected from 203 female consumers who have experienced dissatisfaction through on-line purchase. For statistical analysis, SPSS 18.0 and AMOS 5.0 were used. As a result of the analysis, the suggested model was shown as in the acceptable level. The main findings are as follows;
First, the severity of service failure had a negative effect on recovery satisfaction. This indicates as the severity of complaints felt by customers during on-line purchase is higher, customers feel lower recovery satisfaction.
Second, the controllability on service failure had a negative effect on customer satisfaction. This indicates when customers feel their complaints related problems during on-line purchase could have been prevented by prior controllability of corporation, they feel lower recovery satisfaction.
Third, when it comes to effects of severity of online service failure on recovery satisfaction, only the process justice was significant This indicates when the severity of failure recognized by customers is high, the process justice can function to moderate the negative effect better than distributive justice and interactive justice can.
It also means customers regard it as more precious, rules or recovery system applied by the relevant corporation for recovering complained matters and problems. Moreover, it also means it is important that the customer's opinion proposal opportunity should be more opened and the customer's involvement should be easier while the complaints should be urgently handled. According to online characteristics, complaints are hardly settled by a face-to face method, thus customers recognized the severity higher and think the effect of moderating role of perceived justice hardly influences compared to offline conditions.
Fourth, among the effects of controllability of service failure on recovery satisfaction, the effect of moderating role of perceived justice was not shown significant. Customers, who experienced complaints, consider the problems related to products, delivery, and price can be previously controlled by corporations, which led to lower recovery satisfaction, but this problem will be hardly affected by controlling the recognition on justice.
Fifth, recovery satisfaction had a significant effect on repurchase intention. This indicates in case the complaint made by a customer was well resolved so that the customer feel satisfied, he or she will purchase products again in the relevant on-line shopping mall where he or she underwent that complaint and next time the customer will put a priority on the same shopping mall, and continue to use its products and services.
The contribution of this study is as follows:
First, it could be empirically reviewed, that is, the effect of severity of service failure and controllability on recovery satisfaction, along with an effect of moderating role of perceived justice and the impact on customers' repurchase intention, in an on-line condition.
Second, this study assessed the responses of customers who experienced and made a complaint through on-line purchase, based on actual experiences. On the contrary, in prior studies related to service recovery, the customer reponses had been assessed based on scenarios.
However, scenario techniques have a lower possibility of actual experiences of customers being reflected on results. For overcoming this limitation of the prior studies, an assessment was performed on customers who experienced service failures and suggested complaints of them. Thus this study provides more realistically appealing results.
Third, this study has a need to be improved by on-line corporations having an interest in causes of unsatisfaction considered by customers, before customers who recognized complaints through online purchase started to make a complaint actively.
Fourth, a system should be required that enables customers with complaints to suggest their complaints more easily. Without the complaint suggestion of customers, corporations cannot resolve them by an effort for it. If the initial route for resolving complaints does not tend to be easily accessible, the complaints of customers will just be increasing.
Fifth, due to a non face-to-face system, a characteristic of online-transaction, customers can recognize more highly the severity and controllability problems related to products than in an off-line condition. To reduce the complaints of customers, a corporation has to make an effort to apply consistent procedures and systems for the purpose of the recovery in a fair way.
The limitations and further research directions of this study are as follows:
First, only women were surveyed in this study, which caused a limitation in the representative of samples, thus the range of surveyed objects should be expanded for next study. In the further study, it will be worthy to include not only women in 20's to 30's but also men who have the said experiences then compare to analyze these two groups.
Second, the customers without complaint representation were excluded in this survey thus a next future study will need to adopt another approach that covers these excluded customers as well.
Third, in this study, it was designed that the response to the questionnaire is obtained based on each customer's recollection, which was not enough to control exactly the recovery for service failure.
Fourth, in the next study, more various variables that can show the causes of online service failure, in addition to the variables already applied in this study, should be added then these newly suggested models should be verified so that online failure and recovery can be clarified from a wider range of views.