공정성 지각과 고객 용서: 서비스 회복에서 관계 품질이 미치는 조절 효과

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of justice perceptions (procedural, distributive, and interactional) on customer forgiveness and loyalty in the context of service failures, and to explore the moderating effect of relationship quality on these relationships. Design/methodology/approach - The study collected survey data from 132 customers who experienced recent service failures. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the relationships among justice perceptions, customer forgiveness, customer loyalty, and the moderating role of relationship quality. Findings - The results indicate that procedural, distributive, and interactional justice significantly and positively influence customer forgiveness. Furthermore, customer forgiveness was found to have a strong positive effect on customer loyalty. The study also revealed that relationship quality moderated the effects of procedural and interactional justice on customer forgiveness, weakening these relationships, while no moderating effect was found between distributive justice and customer forgiveness. This suggests that customers with high-quality relationships are less likely to forgive based on procedural or interactional justice alone, but the fairness of the outcome itself is less influenced by their prior relationship quality. Research implications or originality - This study contributes to the service recovery literature by demonstrating the crucial role of justice perceptions in fostering forgiveness and loyalty, particularly highlighting how relationship quality can alter customers' forgiveness responses to service failures. The findings challenge the assumption that high-quality relationships always buffer service failure impacts, offering new insights into how service providers should approach recovery efforts with their most valued customers.