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This study aims to investigate the moderating role of low and high failure severity levels on recovery satisfaction and on behavioral intentions through recovery satisfaction. This research adopted justice theory and regulatory focus theory to provide further explanations on the inconsistencies in the extant literature regarding service failure and responses to service recovery.

This study applied a scenario-based experimental design of two (perceived justice: low vs high) by two (failure severity: low vs high) between-subjects factorial design. Data was collected from 237 mobile phone users recruited via convenience sampling. This study examined the hypothesized relations using Hayes (2018) PROCESS macro version 4.0.

Perceived justice had a higher positive effect on recovery satisfaction at a high failure severity level. The direct effect of perceived justice on behavioral intentions was significant and positive only at a high level of failure severity, whereas the indirect effect of perceived justice on consumers’ positive behavior through recovery satisfaction was more positive at a high level of failure severity.

Justice theory and regulatory focus theory can be used to explain how a well-implemented recovery effort can offset losses that are caused by a highly severe service failure leading to satisfaction and positive responses. However, as this study was conducted within a telecommunication service context, this research needs to be replicated in other areas, including the use of other data collection methods and measurement of consumers’ regulatory focus orientation.

The findings of this study provide managers with valuable insights into the allocation of service providers’ resources for recovery actions according to consumers’ perceived severity levels to regain consumer satisfaction and continued positive behavioral intentions.

Past research on the effect of failure severity levels on recovery satisfaction and consumers’ positive behavioral intentions is scant, and those studies that examined severity levels have shown conflicting results. This study attempted to advance the research by examining the relationship between perceived justice, recovery satisfaction and behavioral intentions at low and high failure severity levels using justice theory and regulatory focus theory. None of the theories have been examined concurrently in the service failure and recovery framework.

Given the fierce competition in financial services, service failure management and trust restoration tactics are becoming strategic priorities. Studies investigating trust restoration have increased over the years due to the significance of trust in services and the frequency of trust violations. Drawing on the sense-making and defensive approaches of attribution theory, this study aims to explore the effectiveness of various trust recovery tactics (e.g. apology, explanation, and investigation) in financial services considering the prevalence of service failure severity.

Based on a scenario-based survey, this study gathered data from 402 consumers of different banks in Pakistan. The study analyzed the data using ordinary least square regressions and structural equation modeling.

The study indicated that explanation is more effective in repairing character-competence and commitment-based trust, while investigation remained highly effective for inducing congruence-based trust. Interestingly, an apology was more effective for communication-based trust repairing, while context-based trust recovery was unaffected against all recovery tactics. Despite the prevalence of severe service failure, recovery actions proved fully effective for character-competence and commitment-based trust while partially effective for congruence-based trust recovery. This study also found that severe service failure undermines the effectiveness of recovery actions in repairing communication and context-based trust.

The study extends the literature on trust recovery by integrating sense-making and defensive attribution theory. The sense-making approach contributes to the existing knowledge on trust recovery by elucidating how consumers and service providers develop a shared understanding to facilitate the recovery mechanism of multidimensional trust in financial services.

This study aims to investigate antecedents of forgiveness from the non-complainers point of view after a service failure in India.

This study bases itself on the theoretical foundations of the Cognitive Emotive Coping model. In the first study, a survey-based design was used for soliciting responses from 291 respondents. An experimental research design was undertaken in the second study, and data were recorded from 120 respondents. Data were analysed using both SPSS and AMOS.

All the antecedent variables, except, affective commitment was found to influence forgiveness significantly. Further, forgiveness also positively influenced repurchase intentions and had a negative influence on negative word-of-mouth. The findings also suggest that the service failure severity effectively moderates the relationship between empathy and forgiveness.

This paper extends the cognitive emotive coping model from the non-complainers point of view by adding relational constructs to it. This study observes that affective commitment is not necessarily related to forgiveness in contrast to existing literature. The relationship between empathy and forgiveness is stronger when failure severity is low.

Based on appraisal theory and social response theory, this study aims to explore the mechanism of AI failure types on consumer recovery expectation from the perspective of service failure assessment and validate the moderate role of anthropomorphism level.

Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to validate the research model. First, to test the effect of robot service failure types on customer recovery expectation; second, to further test the mediating role of perceived controllability, perceived stability and perceived severity; finally, to verify the moderating effect of anthropomorphic level.

Non-functional failures reduce consumer recovery expectation compared to functional failures; perceived controllability and perceived severity play a mediating role in the impact of service failure types on recovery expectation; the influence of service failure types on perceived controllability and perceived severity is moderated by the anthropomorphism level.

The findings enrich the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of service failure types, and have implications for online enterprise follow-up service recovery and improvement of anthropomorphic design.

Inaccurate product information on retail websites lead to dissatisfied customers and profit losses. Yet, the effects of product information failures (PIFs) remain under-explored, with the mobile commerce channel commonly overlooked. This paper aims (1) to investigate the negative effects of PIFs on shoppers' attitudes and behaviours in a mobile context. The authors further (2) evaluate the impacts of the cause and duration of a PIF, changes of expectations towards the retailer after a PIF occurred and how previous mobile shopping experience in general decreases the effects of PIFs.

The authors conducted a scenario-based experiment with a one-factorial between-subjects design. The six most common PIFs of an international leading online fashion retailer are operationalized and tested against a control group. The final sample consists out of 758 mobile shoppers from the UK.

The results demonstrate that the perceived severity of PIFs based on showing customers incorrect information is higher when key information is lacking. Further, when the cause of a PIF is attributed to the retailer, it results in higher recovery expectations towards them. The results also reveal that respondents who have shopped mobile before perceive PIFs as less severe than inexperienced ones.

This research expands the online service failure literature by examining PIFs and its effects in the specific context of mobile commerce. The authors also provide recommendations for a better management of PIFs like the incorporation of PIFs information into reporting packs.

Fierce competition in the crowdfunding market has resulted in high failure rates. Owing to their dedication and efforts, many founders have relaunched failed campaigns as a second attempt. Despite the need for a better understanding, the success of campaign relaunches has not been well-researched. To fill this research gap, this study first theorizes how founders’ learning may enhance their competencies and influence investors’ attribution of entrepreneurial failure. The study then empirically documents the extent and conditions under which such learning efforts impact campaign relaunch performance.

This study examines 5,798 Kickstarter-relaunched campaigns. The founders’ learning efforts are empirically captured by key changes in campaign design that deviate from past business practices. Word movers’ distances and perceptual hashing algorithms (pHash) are used separately to measure differences in campaign textual descriptions and pictorial designs.

Differences in textual descriptions and pictorial designs during campaign failure–relaunch are positively associated with campaign relaunch success. The impacts are further amplified when the previous failures are more severe.

This study is one of the first to examine the success of a campaign relaunch after an initial failure. This study contributes to a better understanding of founders’ learning in crowdfunding contexts and provides insights into the strategies founders can adopt to reap performance benefits.

The intention-behavior gap that occurs when one’s actions do not align with their intentions has been the topic of interest of many researchers. However, the effects of the various constructs that influence the intention-behavior gap in service failure and recovery remain under-explored to date. To fill this gap, this study aims to examine the relationship between switching intention (i.e. intention) and customer exit (i.e. behavior) and the moderating roles of failure severity and service recovery satisfaction.

To test the proposed hypotheses, the authors used a longitudinal panel involving 821 customers who actually experienced a service failure and recovery in 38 fitness centers in Brazil. The data analysis is composed of logistic regression and cross-tabulation.

The results confirmed the significant role of switching intention on customer exit and the moderating effect of failure severity (but not service recovery satisfaction) in the relationship between switching intention and customer exit. Most of all, switching intention had low explanatory power for customer exit, confirming the presence of the intention-behavior gap. The authors further identified a weaker presence of the intention-behavior gap for female (vs male) customers and for those who experienced process failure (vs outcome failure).

Although the authors confirmed the intention-behavior gap, the biggest proportion of the variance remains unexplained. Thus, it is important to explore the roles of other possible drivers, moderators and mediators.

As switching intention is not a strong predictor of customer exit, managers should not assume that those who appear to be on the verge of switching will immediately exit the service provider.

As researchers question the explanatory power of intention for actual behavior, this paper confirms that there is an intention-behavior gap in service failure and recovery. Moreover, given that most researchers have focused on the positive outcomes of service recovery efforts, such as customer loyalty and commitment, studying negative outcomes, including switching intention and customer exit, is a key contribution of this research.

This study examines the different effects of service recovery strategies on customers' future intentions when online shoppers were experiencing delivery failures. Two types of problem severity are evaluated: wrong-product delivery (issues with the product quality or quantity) and late delivery. This study also investigates the impact of service criticality on the relationship between service recovery strategies and customers' future intentions.

This study employs experimental research with 123 online shoppers as participants. Following the results, a subsequent test is conducted to examine the effect of participants' demographics on future intentions. Finally, the current study elaborates the findings using qualitative research, interviewing both sides impacted by the service failures: online shoppers and e-retail managers.

The findings show that complementing product replacement with monetary compensation is the most effective strategy to improve repurchase intention after a dissatisfaction moment. This effect is indifferent to service criticality and severity. Age influences the participants' repurchase intentions, in which younger people are less tolerant of service failures. In contrast, gender and education level do not provide any differences. To prevent delivery failures, managers participating in this study suggest several best practices regarding systems and infrastructure, people and coordination and collaboration with logistics partners.

The study mainly examines a limited type of service and service failures. Further studies are encouraged to expand the variables and scenarios, as well as to employ more distinctive methods, to enrich the findings related to recovery strategy in the e-commerce industry.

Given proper compensation, service failure could create momentum for online retailers to boost customer loyalty. This study suggests that managers design the most effective service recovery to win customers back to the business.

This paper enriches the literature related to a service recovery strategy, particularly within the online shopping context.

Online shoppers make product purchase decisions based on product information shown on a retailer's website and potentially in comparison to that seen on competitors' websites. Insufficient, poor quality or missing information about a product can lead to reduced retailer sales. Measuring online product information quality (PIQ) is therefore an essential element in helping retailers maximize their potential success. This paper aims (1) to identify directly quantifiable PIQ criteria, (2) to assess the effects of PIQ and (3) to evaluate the moderating effect of product involvement.

The authors conducted a scenario-based experiment within 3,544 do-it-yourself (DIY) online shoppers from the United Kingdom (UK). Within an 8 × 2 × 2 between-subjects design, the authors manipulated the factors PIQ criteria (8), PIQ level (2) and product type (2).

The findings support that poor PIQ has a negative impact on consumers online shopping outcomes. The authors also found that the effects of PIQ differ between the various criteria, the product category and the level of consumer involvement in the selling process. In the context of product depiction, title readability and product attribute comparability with other retailers' websites a high level of PIQ is required. Moreover, high involvement products need a higher level of PIQ than low involvement products.

This research expands website quality and service failure literature by introducing PIQ criteria and its effects in the context of online retailing. The authors also establish actionable managerial recommendations to assist retailers to embrace and utilize PIQ to better understand their own potential website and thus business improvements.

This study investigates two moderators of the effects of manufacturers' recovery efforts following a product defect on customers' perceptions of product quality: the severity of the product defect and whether the recovery efforts were covered under warranty or not.

A total of 478 USA customers who purchased a new car from a cooperating manufacturer participated in a survey. Customers reported the most important product defect (if any) the customers had experienced with the customers' vehicle during the past year. Three linear regressions (OLS) were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Defect severity moderates the effects of recovery efforts on quality perceptions. The well-known recovery effect occurs only for product defects of minor severity. Experiencing a severe product defect damages the customers' perceptions of product quality even if the product defect is completely fixed. Double deviations (failed recovery of a product defect) do not damage quality perceptions for defects of minor severity. Finally, warranty coverage of repairs can attenuate the adverse effects of a failed recovery of severe defects on customers' quality perceptions. Additionally, only non-complainers who have experienced a severe product defect correspond to the prevailing conceptualization of an at-risk customer group.

Despite the pervasiveness of product defects, research on the effects of experiencing product defects on customers' product quality perceptions is scarce. Furthermore, the authors' findings reconcile inconsistent results and provide a more nuanced understanding of the well-known recovery and double-deviation effects. Finally, the role of warranty coverage in the recovery process as a buffer for customers' perceptions of product quality is novel.