The Relationships among Perceived Fairness, Customer Satisfaction and Relationship Quality in a Multi-Channel Retail Environment

Abstract

<p>This study primarily aims to examine the differences in customer's service recovery expectations across different retail channels and investigates the relationship among service recovery expectation, consumer's fairness perception towards service recovery, post recovery satisfaction, and relationship quality. The study also investigates the moderating effect of past shopping experience and channel preference on the relationship between post recovery satisfaction and customer relationship quality. The relationship between perceived recovery fairness and satisfaction was significantly supported. The satisfaction was found to be a significant predictor of relationship quality in the context of service failure and recovery. Consumers' past shopping experience and their channel preference were found to have a moderating effect on their relationship quality with the retailer. This implies that post recovery satisfaction has relatively greater impact on the relationship quality of customers trying a new retail channel than those who have been using it extensively for a longer period of time and already prefer it. Hence, the retailers entering new channels can formulate their service recovery strategies to build and improve relationship quality with their potential returning customers. However, the two major channels in a multi-channel retailing did not differ in terms of customer's service recovery expectation. This result implies that the customers want the same level of response and action from a retailer when they are encountered with service failure and the retailer must respond in an appropriate way in order to maintain their relationship with the customer regardless of the type of retail channel consumers are using.</p>