The Relationship Between Service Quality and Service Recovery Quality in Retail Stores

Abstract

<p>As service has been emphasized as an important aspect of the current retail industry (Kandampully, 2012), researchers and marketers have recently been required to understand customer expectations for service quality and service recovery quality in the retail industry. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between service quality expectations (personal attention, tangibles, and reliability) and service recovery evaluations (distributive and interactional justice and positive and negative emotions) in the retail environment. The results of this study imply that service providers should carefully manage customers' service quality expectations to enhance the effects of service recovery in cases where customers encounter service failure. In particular, they need to pay attention to individual customers while managing their retail stores' visual appeal. In addition, once service providers fail, they need to carefully respond to customers' problems no matter what expectations customers have about service quality.</p>