Date of Award

12-2009

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Legacy Department

Management

Committee Chair/Advisor

Miller, Janis L

Committee Member

Robbins , Tina L

Committee Member

Moore , DeWayne D

Abstract

This dissertation studies the trend of service recovery practice over the past decade, establishes a service recovery model, and compares the cultural differences using it. Service recovery has been an important topic in service operations, but few studies discuss the changes of recovery practices over time and analyze their differences across countries. This dissertation consists of three essays. The first investigates the service recovery trends by comparing recovery practices in 2008 and in 2000. In 2008, successful recovery was found to have less impact on satisfaction and loyalty, and fair compensation has less chance of successful recovery. The second essay establishes a service recovery model based on justice theory and attempts to solve the service recovery paradox by separating process and outcome satisfaction. In addition, this model is used to conduct country comparisons between the US and Taiwan. While interactional justice and procedural justice are found to be the focus in Taiwan, cost and distributive justice are more important in the US. The third essay, a methodology note, investigates whether the results from 1- and 2-incident Critical Incident Technique processes are different. While the response rates and item completion rates are similar between the two processes, few variables have significant mean differences. Overall, this dissertation advances service recovery research in longitudinal, international, and methodological issues.

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