Investigating the role of customer forgiveness following a double deviation
ISSN: 0887-6045
Article publication date: 10 February 2022
Issue publication date: 19 October 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Despite double deviation being an acknowledged phenomenon in services marketing, less research has been devoted to the evaluation of the underlying relationships between cognitive appraisals, customer forgiveness and postrecovery actions following a double deviation. Therefore, this study aims to develop and empirically test a conceptual model to determine the role of customer forgiveness and its boundary conditions in double-deviation scenarios based on the stress and coping theory.
Design/methodology/approach
This study aggregated 290 survey data by adopting the retrospective experience sampling method and examined the proposed model using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping analysis.
Findings
The results confirm that customer forgiveness mediates the link between service recovery dissatisfaction and postrecovery customer complaints (i.e. online and third-party complaints). Additionally, attribution-based factors (i.e. stability and controllability attributions) positively moderated the service recovery dissatisfaction–customer forgiveness relationship. Finally, these findings exhibit that relationship-based factors (i.e. relationship duration and affective commitment) had negative moderating effects on the service recovery dissatisfaction–customer forgiveness link.
Originality/value
Without ensuring customer forgiveness, customers who experience failure twice in a row may act more aggressively to damage service firms. Yet, knowledge of customer forgiveness in a double-deviation scenario is still lacking. The results make twofold contributions to the service recovery literature. First, this study emphasizes customer forgiveness as an integral coping response that has a mediating role in the relationship between service recovery dissatisfaction and postrecovery customer complaints. Second, this study shed insights into boundary conditions of customer forgiveness by identifying attribution- and relationship-based factors as moderators.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology Taiwan (MOST 109-2410-H-024 -012).
Citation
Lin, C.-Y. and Chou, E.-Y. (2022), "Investigating the role of customer forgiveness following a double deviation", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 36 No. 8, pp. 1042-1057. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-04-2021-0112
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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