Relationship between customer loyalty and service failure, service recovery and switching costs in online retailing

Abstract

Service failures in e-tailing are inevitable, understanding how service failure and recovery efforts affect customer loyalty forms an important topic for discussion among researchers and practitioners. This study investigates the relationship of service failure severity, service recovery justice and perceived switching costs with customer loyalty. It also studies the moderation relationship between service recovery justice and perceived switching costs. Data collected from 306 respondents tested against the research model adopted from previous studies suggests that, service failure severity. Interactional justice, procedural justice and perceived switching costs have a significant relationship with customer loyalty and that interactional justice can mitigate the negative relationship between service failure severity and customer loyalty.