The effect of service failure and recovery on customer satisfaction in the airline service encounter

This study will attempt to build an integrated model of the customer satisfaction process with service encounter in a comprehensive point of view including the expectancy–disconfirmation theory, justice theory, and attribution theory. In addition, this study will attempt to examine the influence of service failure-related variables and service recovery-related variables on customer satisfaction in the airline firms' service failure and recovery situation. The results showed that the higher the controllability and severity of the failure, the more positive influence on expectancy of recovery and more negative influence on the recovery satisfaction increased. They also showed that the higher procedural recovery efforts and distributive/interactional recovery efforts, the more positive influence on perceived recovery performance and recovery satisfaction also increased. It was found that the recovery satisfaction with service encounter depended on the extent to which the customer's perception of recovery efforts confirmed the expectancy of recovery. Also it was found that perceived recovery performance has an effect on recovery satisfaction through the mediation of recovery disconfirmation indirectly as well as directly.