A Study on the Influence of Service Recovery on Customers - Focusing on the Case of Restaurants
Michiko Kayano (AY 2012)
Service Recovery (SR) is "the action taken by a service provider in response to a service failure" (Gronroos, 1988). SR has the potential to have a significant impact on firms' profits. However, the scale of SR (i.e., the number of firms) has not been studied. However, no research has focused on how the level (resource level, hereafter RL) and type of SR affect customer behavior, such as willingness to return to the store in the future and word of mouth. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between RL and type of SR as independent variables and customer satisfaction, willingness to return after the SR experience, and word of mouth about the SR experience as dependent variables.
In order to make the scenarios more realistic, we first conducted a preliminary survey in which we asked the respondents about their past SR experiences through free writing. In the preliminary survey, 42 SR cases were collected from 24 university students. Based on these results, we developed an SR scenario and conducted the following SR survey. The RL of SR was set at three levels (low, medium, and high). The RLs for the attitude of apology were "not apologetic," "normal," and "courteous," and the RLs for compensation were "nothing," "restoration of the original service," and "restoration of the service with ten coupons. To avoid differences in the types of service failures, two types of service failures were set: "provision of service different from the order" and "slow provision of service".
The survey included 224 college students. The results showed that overall, SR decreased the willingness to return to the restaurant. Looking at the type of service failure, "service delivery different from order" had a higher satisfaction level after SR than "slow service delivery", but did not affect the willingness to revisit or word-of-mouth. Regarding the type of SR, compensation in the form of goods had a greater effect on SR satisfaction than apology. However, there was no difference in the willingness to return and word-of-mouth for the attitude of apology between the medium and high RLs. On the other hand, for compensation in kind, willingness to return increased as RL increased, and word-of-mouth increased.
In this survey, there was little difference in attitudes toward apology between the medium and high RLs. The results of this study showed that the attitude toward apology did not differ much between medium and high RL, and that compensation in the form of goods had a greater impact on satisfaction, willingness to revisit after SR, and word-of-mouth behavior when the RL of SR was changed. The results showed that compensation in the form of goods had a greater impact on satisfaction, willingness to return after SR, and word-of-mouth when the RL of SR was changed. Future directions include defining the RL of SR more quantitatively, increasing the number of RLs to see changes, or expanding the range of variables.
(Translated by DeepL)