Opportunistic customer claiming during service recovery

Abstract

Although a potentially significant issue to managers and academics alike, opportunistic customer behavior in the service recovery context has been largely ignored. A multi-stage research program, comprising actual customer claims (Study 1), in depth customer interviews (Study 2) and three experimental studies (Studies 3, 4, 5), explored opportunistic customer claiming behavior during service recovery and yielded robust findings across methods, contexts and samples. Potential determinants of opportunistic claiming in a service recovery context were identified by drawing on the justice, self-concept maintenance and neutralization theories. The findings support the hypothesis that when experiencing lower distributive, procedural and interactional justice, respondents were more likely to be opportunistic in their claiming. Furthermore, consumers were more likely to be opportunistic when dealing with large compared to small firms, and when they were in one-time transactions compared to when they had an established relationship with the firm. Finally, increased claiming in general, and opportunistic claiming in particular, did not lead to increased satisfaction with the service recovery.