Antecedents and Outcomes of Consumer Relationship Proneness after Service Failure and Recovery-Moderating Role of Informational Justice: A research on Pakistani Mobile Telecom Industry

Abstract

The marketing research in services sector has got importance during the last two decades because services sector has dominated by adding profits to service provider businesses and companies and by adding huge income to the economy of almost all countries. This research aims to study the importance of relationship prone consumers when service failure occurs and companies step forward to recover that failure in mobile telecom service services sector in Pakistan. Research tries to put light on the personality traits like social affiliation, social recognition, product category involvement and consumer relationship proneness in generating the attitudinal loyalty i.e. word of mouth after the successful service recovery of any service failure occurred. This research also aims to study the moderating role of informational justice between consumer relationship proneness and word of mouth.

Survey method consisting of self administered questionnaires is used to collect data from students, retailers and job holder of Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Dera Ghazi Khan, who faced any kind of service failure regarding mobile telecom services they are using. Structural equation modeling technique is followed to test the relationships among the constructs.

It is found that social affiliation, social recognition and product category involvement have got significantly positive relationship with word of mouth after service failure and recovery. Consumer relationship proneness on the other hand is fully mediating the relationship between social affiliation and word of mouth, not mediating the relationship between social recognition and word of mouth and partially mediating the relationship between product category involvement and word of mouth after service failure and recovery. Study finds that informational justice is significantly moderating the relationship between consumer relationship proneness and word of mouth after service failure and recovery.

Findings of this study elaborate the significance of relationship prone consumers. Companies can retain these consumers more easily by showing little efforts in recovering the occurrence of possible service failures. Findings of study also have theoretical implications. This research provides the foundations to carry the research on relationship proneness as fruitful personality trait in consumer psychology research.

Keywords: Consumer relationship proneness, service failure, service recovery, informational justice, word of mouth