The road to recovery: Overcoming service failures through positive emotions

Abstract

This research builds upon a service recovery framework, providing new perspectives on the role of two discrete, positive emotions – gratitude and pride – in process-oriented service failure and service recovery encounters. Specifically, this research demonstrates that recovery actions are appraised and trigger these emotions to promote the positive satisfaction–RPI link. Study 1 highlights the importance of service providers' recovery intentions, finding that benevolent motivations can be appraised to elicit gratitude and mediate the effects of recovery actions on outcomes. Study 2 reveals the effects of the agent responsible for the service recovery, showing that positive effects of service provider and customer initiated recovery determines whether gratitude or pride is elicited, with both emotions promoting favorable effects. Implications of these service provider recovery strategies are discussed along with suggestions that further investigations move away from global emotions and toward discrete emotions to further understand the existing service recovery framework.