Impact of Perceived Severity and Controllability of Service Failures on Expectations of Justice in Complaint Redressal

Abstract

The present study uses the 'Justice Theory' framework and links the combined effect of severity and controllability of service failure situations to the justice based recovery expectations of airline passengers. The consumer expectations are comprised of Distributive justice, Procedural justice, and Interactional justice needs as stated in the Justice Theory. The integrating effects of severity and controllability on the justice based recovery expectations are the key issues that this research paper unfolds. Objectives of the study are: To make an inventory of common complaints in the airline industry. To find the severity and controllability of the complaint situations as perceived by airline passengers. To identify the differences, if any, in expectation of justice across different situations according to their perceived severity and controllability. The design of this research includes two stages, namely, qualitative and quantitative methodology to achieve the objectives of the research. In the first stage of this research, in-depth exploratory interviews with the officials of all the airlines operating in the state of Goa, India, were conducted to get acquainted with the industry specific issues. An enriched inventory of complaints and the complaints were classified under thirteen major heads. In the second stage of the research, the hypotheses based on conceptual model were empirically tested. This study proposed and tested a conceptual model based on literature review and exploratory study. The conceptual model hypothesized that the justice based recovery expectations depend on the combined characteristics of severity and controllability of the failure situation. The results of this study suggest that expectation of justice is significantly different across different types of failure situations. This study concludes that justice based recovery expectations in complaint redressal; depend on the combined effect of severity and controllability of the failure situations as perceived by the airline passengers. The study has theoretical contributions and managerial implications.