Why Service Recovery Fails? Examining the Roles of Restaurant Type and Failure Severity in Double Deviation With Justice Theory

Abstract

Due to the increasingly competitive nature of the industry, the prevalence of service failure in restaurants has made a satisfactory service recovery critical for retaining customers. However, the success rate of service recovery is far from satisfactory. Informed by Rawls’s justice theory, this study explored service recovery failures (double service failure) in a restaurant setting. Results from our experiment indicate that the effects of different types of service recovery failure on postrecovery evaluations vary across two situational factors: restaurant type and failure severity. Specifically, procedural injustice (low-resolution speed) was found to exert more influence on word-of-mouth intentions in a quick-service restaurant than a full-service restaurant. For failures of high severity (vs. low severity), distributive injustice (no compensation offered) is found to be more impactful. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.