Title: Justice and emotions in service recovery: a complaint in B2C e-commerce

Authors: Alberto Urueña; Antonio Hidalgo

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, Madrid 28006, Spain ' Department of Business Administration, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, Madrid 28006, Spain

Abstract: This study proposes a marketing approach to service recovery (SR) models to explain what factors affect cumulative satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM) following complaint behaviour. The model has its base on the definition of perceived justice and its influence on satisfaction with service recovery (SSR) and on emotions (positive and negative). Trust acts as a central construct in the model, receiving influence from the affective and cognitive aspect. The sample for this study consists of 303 Spanish business-to-consumer e-commerce (B2C-EC) users who made a complaint after an electronic transaction. Results from the analysis show the influence of perceived justice - mainly interactional justice and procedural justice - on SSR and the relevance of positive emotions as a key factor in SSR processes, in contrast to the major role that negative emotions have traditionally played in these models.

Keywords: customer complaints; service recovery; e-commerce; emotions; perceived justice; interactional justice; procedural justice; B2C; business-to-consumer; electronic commerce; marketing; customer satisfaction; customer loyalty; word-of-mouth; WOM; trust; Spain; electronic transactions; e-transactions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEME.2015.069877

International Journal of Engineering Management and Economics, 2015 Vol.5 No.1/2, pp.3 - 18

Received: 17 Sep 2014
Accepted: 08 Nov 2014
Published online: 15 Jun 2015 *

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